RSSGuilty Plea in MS Source Code Case
By Ed Oswald | Published August 30, 2005, 11:04 AM
A Connecticut man who was caught selling portions of Microsoft's source code for its Windows operating system on his Web site has plead guilty to charges associated with the theft.
Known by the Internet handle "illwill," William Genovese Jr., 28 had obtained code from the Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 operating systems. He was charged in February 2004 after Microsoft discovered the code for sale on a Web site owned by Genovese.
An undercover FBI agent and a paid Microsoft investigator were able to successfully purchase and download the code.
Unauthorized users that have access to source code could pose a problem for Microsoft. By having access to the internals of an operating system, a hacker could write new viruses and malware to exploit vulnerabilities within that code.
Microsoft does have methods to share its Windows source, however they come with strict restrictions on who can see the code. The company believes that Genovese did not get the code from its own servers.
If convicted, Genovese could face 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
"Unauthorized users that have access to source code could pose a problem for Microsoft. By having access to the internals of an operating system, a hacker could write new viruses and malware to exploit vulnerabilities within that code."
In other words:
Beware all *nix/BSD users!
Whatever.
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Posted twice. OOPS
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10 years is to large a penalty, yea he shouldn't have been selling it, but the source does need to get out there. Once the source is out there and people create programs to exploit the vulnerabilities then microsoft will have to patch them.
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"Unauthorized users that have access to source code could pose a problem for Microsoft. By having access to the internals of an operating system, a hacker could write new viruses and malware to exploit vulnerabilities within that code."
Uh-oh... everybody has access to the source code of the operating system I am using... should I be worried now?
(using Ubuntu)
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The key phrase here is "could face 10 years in prison." I mean, take a look at the guy who stole 92 million e-mail addresses from AOL, sent over 7 billion spam e-mails to those addresses, then sold the list for $28,000. He only got 15 months in prison. Which one is the bigger crime?
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You know....10 years, because that's 10 years greater than the time it takes for microsoft stuff to become obsolete.
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"Genovese could face 10 years in prison" - You've got to be kidding me.
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About the same as Chinese dissident would get for distributing "illigal information". USA places itself in a good company.
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An act like that, He deserves to goto jail. Its considered stealing and then reselling my lord. He dug his own Grave. First of all he stole the code from Microsoft and then proceeded to sell it over the net. Personally i think 10 years is not enough, 15 years should give him time to think about what he did. Its like somone stealing your car and then reselling it to someone else. Some people sure lack intelligence.
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"By having access to the internals of an operating system, a hacker could write new viruses and malware to exploit vulnerabilities within that code."
How come they know there are vulnerabilities within the code... and still, it was released into a major OS version? So, could the MS development team be called "negligent"?
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> Its like somone stealing your car and then
> reselling it to someone else.
It's like copying your car then reselling that copy to someone else.
> Some people sure lack intelligence.
Talk about it.
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