Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 07:49:41 +0100 From: yuri <ure@home.com> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re[2]: another 7 billion down Message-ID: <3251609450.20001027074941@home.com> In-Reply-To: <NEBBLHNJHLFCJGCBFDKIGEKFCBAA.james.wilde@tbv.se> References: <NEBBLHNJHLFCJGCBFDKIGEKFCBAA.james.wilde@tbv.se>
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Hello James, Friday, October 27, 2000, 08:16:26 zulu time, you wrote: JAW> Not the Yuri from St Petersburg, Russia by any chance? JAW> :) nope, I used to be a Russian though ;-) the story is all over the place, here they say something about the network being compromised for over 3 months; my point is that had they spent a fraction of that money utilising the best talent from Open Source camp, they might be happier campers by now... or this could be a cheap trick leading to "Save MSFT! Don't touch ma guns and ma soft!" <G> Redmond, Washington, Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. said its computer network was broken into by hackers. The world's biggest software maker is working with federal authorities to track down the culprits. Microsoft became aware of the attack in the last few days, spokesman John Pinette said, confirming a report earlier in the Wall Street Journal. ``We view this as a deplorable act and are working with law enforcement to protect our intellectual property,'' Pinette said. Source code to some of Microsoft's most valuable software, including the latest versions of Windows and Office, may have been stolen by the hackers, the Journal reported. Redmond, Washington- based Microsoft is the world's largest software maker. ``At this point, we don't view that anyone has compromised or otherwise tampered with our source code,'' Pinette said. He declined to comment on the specifics of the break-in. Microsoft security employees discovered the break-in on Wednesday, the paper said. They found that internal passwords were being sent to an e-mail address in St. Petersburg, Russia, and were being used to transfer computer source code outside of the company's campus, the paper said. Blueprints The hackers are believed to have had access to the computer network for three months, the Journal said. It appears that they were initially able to slip into Microsoft's network using a software program called QAZ Trojan, the paper said, citing a person familiar with the case. So-called Trojans allow hackers to get into a computer network undetected and then use the system against the will of the authorized users, said Sam Curry, security architect at McAfee.com Corp., a computer-security software maker. If the hackers were able to get Microsoft source code, they'd be able to create their own versions of the software or make perfect copies, he said. ``When you get source code from a company, you're stealing the blueprints to a piece of software,'' Curry said. Microsoft tried to trace the break-in itself and then contacted the FBI yesterday, the Journal said. A possible motive for such a break-in could be hackers who want to hold Microsoft hostage by threatening to disclose the company's intellectual property, the paper said. This isn't the first time Microsoft's computers have been hacked into, Pinette said. ``People have accessed portions of our network before and we've moved aggressively to address the problem,'' he said. -- Best regards, yuri mailto:ure@home.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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