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Microsoft Reward Leads to Arrest of Sasser Suspect
tritone writes "According to this article on CNET, it was a reward from Microsoft that led to the arrest of the perpertrator of the Sasser Windows Worm. This is the first success for Microsoft's Antivirus Award Program, a $5 million fund to reward people for coming forward with information about those who release major worms and viruses."
...I also think it is admirable that they are taking responsibility for the damage in some way. Props to Microsoft.
Oh, come on troll! You call that taking responsibility?
How about paying for the time of all the admins that have been running around patching systems to get rid of it?
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
It has deterent value. It says if you become good at writing viruses you will get nailed. Maybe MS does not care about the young kid messing around who does not damage anything. Microsoft is showing good restraint.
"...you will get nailed."? "will"? I think not. You *might* get nailed, but you *might* get nailed regardless of reward. Virus writers were being "nailed" long before Microsoft attempted to test how infected decent people were with capitalism.
I myself, don't care how much money Microsoft throws up. It's all stolen money, attained through illegal and ammoral means. May as well take a bribe from a drug dealer, but alas, at most drug dealers would refuse to corrupt the mind of a mere child. In short, I would never rat out on a virus writer, and I don't care how much damage he has done. You run with your sword out in front of you, you deserve to trip and be impaled.
Virus writers need to work independantly, forfeit bragging for prolonged success. If I could bring myself to write Win32 code, I'd write a virus myself and make it as anonymous as I could and never even hint I was the coder.
A virus is free speech, it's errata in a way correcting the lies Microsoft has told. It's payback for all the developers put out on the street becuase their company was overthrown, illegally by Microsoft. It's a libertarian concept, a patriotic concept, a revolutionary concept. If you are annoyed at viruses, then you have a choice to move to a more competitive platform.