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Windows Source Code Seller Arrested
prostoalex writes "New York Times says William O. Genovese Jr., 27, of Meriden, Conn. has been arrested by the Feds for selling source code for Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems. It's not perfectly clear whether Genovese was selling the portion of the code that was leaked earlier this year or if he had access to other portions of Windows source code. The timing, though, coincides, as the code leaked in February, the same month NYT claims the entrepreneur obtained the source code."
It's not perfectly clear whether Genovese was selling the portion of the code that was leaked earlier this year
It's not perfectly clear whether Genovese was selling [the code] at all. Innocent until proven guilty, despite what our current administration would have you believe.
Do you like German cars?
...is that the guy sold the source code printed on soft white double-ply. (unscented.)
I heard that people are now leaking the linux code all over the place ;)
He tried to use Paypal to sell it, or he sold it for only $20?? Apparently, he doesn't place a high value on MS's source code...
... now lets hope that in the next step we extend the arrest to sellers of Windows binary code.
I find it disgusting that /. (and other news sites) publish the arrested person's full name. This person is not yet proven guilty, and still has a right for privacy and personal integrity - when a British newspaper published the names of convicted child molesters, lynch mobs formed to try to hunt down and kill those people. This should never happen, as it is totally against the concept of a modern constitutional state.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
that just by possessing source code and attempting to sell it, Mr. Genovese is labeled a hacker, in the first line of the article no less. It's a shame that hackers are the continual blacksheep of the tech world...
Any malware developer could probably derive a benefit. They are unscrupulous, and it is usually more trivial to examine uncompiled software for vulnerabilities.
Do you like German cars?
Now if we can just get the person or persons responsible for wasting so much of my productive time with their crappy code....
Extortionists.
You get the code, look for flaws, write a program that exploits the flaws, and say "Hey Microsoft, give us $50,000 or we'll release this new virus that will wipe out every computer running Windows 2000 that's connected to the Internet."
Now that's assuming such a security flaw could exist...and at this point wouldn't surprise a lot of people around here.
I doubt business rivals would care much because their only competition right now (wrt Windows 2000) seems to be from people in the open source community. You DO NOT want leaked code appearing in OSS.
It's SO easy to get the code legitimately from Microsoft. All you have to do is form a huge country and threaten to convert over to Linux from Windows for security concerns. Ballmer will probably fly out himself with a copy of any source code you desire.
Now isn't that easier than committing a felony?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
were the comments:
// Did stuff here when drunk,
// seems to work, don't change!
// Obfusticate code and use really
// old librarys, this should annoy
// some Wine devs muhahaha
// Struck a deal with Symantec to
// leave this vunerability in, don't
// change!
*sigh* I wish they could convict my mother-in-law of this.
I pulled a jack move to cop this sig
Inside sources indicate there will be a fraud charge added: he was representing that this was the code of an operating system.
OK, make up your mind, which is it, a trade secret or a copyright? Because copyrighted works are intended to, eventually, become public domain, one cannot copyright a trade secret. Or, at least, that's more or less how it's written in the U.S. Constitution.
You can see where this is going.
Recapping:
If you thought it was difficult doing a thorough Theo code audit for security was a formidable task, even given the open source code, then imagine the difficulty of looking through all of the source and wondering if any of it infringes on anyone's claimed "Intellectual Property". There aren't any options to diff and grep to complete such a task, AFAICT. The other half of the comparison remains under lock and key, except to those with rights to the IP.
Linus' policy of requiring signed patch contributions to the Linux source looks more and more like a good and proper defensive measure. I'd feel better if other high profile FOSS projects had systems of signing patches and an examinable web of trust between the major contributors. Go ahead and accept patches, but let each contributor sign them.
The whole issue of IP indemnification reeks of a deliberate strategy to slow the growth of free and open source deployments by sowing doubt into the minds of decision makers considering use of FOSS for their business but must consider risk in their decision (and a limited amount of time and information on which to base a decision).
Transparency should make FOSS less IP infringing quickly compared to closed source, where IP infringements can be compiled away from easy recognition by the IP owners.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
He should have used rmcc. Real Man's Compiler Collection won't give you any annoying error messages (even when compiling windows source code).
Our development team switched to rmcc from gcc when the first version was released back a week ago and the change in productivity was unbelievable.