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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...
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!
Inside sources indicate there will be a fraud charge added: he was representing that this was the code of an operating system.