Hackers, Meet Microsoft

Mz6 writes "The random chatter of several hundred Microsoft engineers filled the cavernous executive briefing center recently at the company's sprawling campus outside Seattle. Within minutes after their meeting was convened, however, the hall became hushed. Hackers had successfully lured a Windows laptop onto a malicious wireless network. 'It was just silent,' said Stephen Toulouse, a program manager in Microsoft's security unit. 'You couldn't hear anybody breathe.' The demo was part of an extraordinary two days in which outsiders were invited into the heart of the Windows empire for the express purpose of exploiting flaws in Microsoft computing systems. The event, which Microsoft has not publicized, was dubbed 'Blue Hat' -- a reference to the widely known 'Black Hat' security conference, tweaked to reflect Microsoft's corporate color."

Comments

Re:Corporate Color

[nachoboy]

The blue is actually a reference to the color of the square around your photograph on the Microsoft corporate cardkey. Only full-time employees of Microsoft have blue borders. Contractors and vendors have an orange border. Events for Microsoft employees only are typically referred to as "blue-badge only."

Re:Pay outs

[umofomia]

They returned over 25 billion to their shareholders via tax free dividends.

Where'd you get the impression that it was tax free? People who received the dividends still had to pay taxes on it (though it was treated separately from normal income).

From http://www.microsoft.com/msft/FAQ/faqdividend.mspx :

What is the tax treatment of the special dividend?
The special dividend, along with the November 2004 quarterly dividend, was treated as "qualified dividend income" for U.S. federal income tax purposes. These dividends may also be considered "extraordinary" under the U.S. federal income tax rules depending on the facts and circumstances of the stockholder. Treatment as extraordinary may affect a corporate shareholder's basis in its Microsoft stock or, with respect to individual shareholders, may affect the tax characterization of a sale of their Microsoft shares. Thus, we strongly urge each stockholder to consult with their tax advisor regarding their specific tax treatment of these dividends including all applicable state, local, foreign and U.S. federal tax considerations.

Engineers?

[HydroCarbon10]

WTF is up with calling programmers engineers now? The term 'engineer' is regulated in all 50 states, and calling yourself an engineer without being licensed is worthy of a fine. There are some exceptions, but these vary from state to state, making it best to completely drop the title 'engineer' unless you're actually licensed in the state you're advertising in.

Re:Engineers?

[chapman_164]

Actually, calling yourself an engineer is fine. Calling yourself a "Professional Engineer" is what will get you in trouble unless you are appropriately licensed.

Re:Good start

[drsmithy]

It would not supprise me to see Microsoft doing a Apple after Longhorn of creating a new Windows OS from scratch and praying that LH will hold untill it comes out.

Apple didn't create a new OS from scratch, they bought an existing one - NeXT (although many will argue Apple bought Steve Jobs and NeXT was a nice bonus).

Moreover, since NeXT was actually released for the first time way back in 1989, OS X's codebase is actually around 4 years *older* than Windows NT's.

Apple didd this when small and surivived. And MS can do it now but cant pospone much longer.

Microsoft will not create another from-scratch OS in the forseeable future. There is simply no need. Technically and architecturally NT is just as good as any of its contemporaries. 99% of problems in Windows come from legacy support (being phased out with .NET, x86-86 also providing a convenient excuse) and less than ideal default settings (hopefully on the way out with LH).