Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Employee Allegedly Hacked AltaVista
An anonymous reader writes "Seattle PI has a story about Microsoft employee who worked on the MSN Search initiative having allegedly broken into AltaVista computers and stolen prorietary technology. However, the illegal break-in happened before he was hired by Microsoft. The question is, did Microsoft know anything about it? How much code was being written into MSN Search?"
For years there had been idle speculation about how much stolen code (GPL or otherwise) was in Windows. Yet when the portions of Windows 2000 source code were leaked, MS was found to be squeaky clean. But don't let me stand between you and inevitable tin foil hats.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Because, most companies make you sign an agreement that anything you write becomes the property of the company, so you just cant pick up and take everything you've written with you when you leave.
The question is: Will AV pull a Darl McBride, and claim that MSN search was based on AV, and should cease and desist immediately, and start suing everyone who uses MSN search for IP infringements?
Naturally they will in that case refuse to show the sources of AV, making it impossible for Microsoft to prove the opposite.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I don't believe that source code theft is really such a problems for such companies - I really really doubt microsoft would use much of altavista's code even if they legally could! (It's so unbelievably much work to figure out someone elses mature code....)
However, employee education leakage is far more important. The raison d'etre for some of those architectural choices, or experiences with certain emergent pattern in large scale systems, and similarly complex issues are very, very valuable.
So really - feel sorry for microsoft... this just gives them bad PR, potentially opens them up for lawsuits (however unfounded), and generally doesn't do them any good..
I wonder where the claim of 5000 dollars damage comes from? The article says he claims he was curious about the progression of the product (which honestly, however illegal, I sympathize with - you put so much of yourself in these systems and then all of a sudden you're not allowed to know anything about them... arg!), so maybe it's all just much ado about nothing.
Now be honest, how many software developers here have copies of source code from every company they've ever worked for? I sure do. I've never used any non-trivial portion of it (especially since each software job I've had has been in a radically different field) nor would I, mainly because I'd probably want to completely rewrite it anyway :), but I just hate the idea of "losing" something I worked so hard on, even if it justs sits on some dusty CD somewhere and isn't really "mine". They're essentially digital "trophies" I suppose. :)
On the other hand, if I someday go to work for a direct competitor of a company I used to work for, I'd sure as hell make sure I had deleted most of the code I had from the previous company. I definitely wouldn't keep the entire project tree at the very least.
I don't work in software, so let me throw out this question. Don't they make you sign an NDA when you work on something like a big search company's search technology? I know they do this in some other tech businesses, making it really hard for you to work for a competitor on the same sort of product without violating your agreement. The reason I ask is that I'm curious how they could hire him for MSN search in the first place.
As far as the stolen code goes, since it happened before he was hired by MS, you can't really blame them. I was also thinking, if he worked on it himself anyway, couldn't he probably replicate most of the functionality even without the actual code in front of him? Then again, the article says, "Chavet told investigators that he worked on the AltaVista source code while at the company and logged into the AltaVista system after leaving because he 'was curious about the evolution of the source code after his departure.'" so maybe he was just trying to steal the most up to date ideas possible. :-)
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Yeah and also that damn Einstein who stole the work of Newton first then butchered most of the stuff and claimed that it was obsolete and gave us that relativity thingy. Because we all know that all the inventions and discoveries of human kind are never based on the previous discoveries of the people before us. Of course this is absolutely not the basic principle of existence of our whole civilization. We all Gates haters know that.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
You're right that he's not got much common sense...
Feel free to bitch about your employer's poor security. If you're a permanent employee, and confident of your position, hack in to show it can be done and report your findings to the powers that be. (I'd still recommend telling your boss you're going to try, though.)
But for the love of God, don't leave a company, then hack in to their systems just to show them that it can be done. You've left - your responsibility to their security has ended, and if you do it then, people will merely suspect your motives.
I wouldn't dream of hacking into an ex-employer's systems, no matter how benign or helpful I thought I was being, unless I had their express permission to try.
Maybe it's just me. And anyone else with some common sense.