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Microsoft Tricks Hacker Into Jail
CompotatoJ writes "Wired News reported that William 'IllWill' Genovese was sentenced to prison after being tricked by a Microsoft Investigator offering to pay $20 for a copy of the secret source code. From the article: 'The investigator then returned and arranged a second $20 transaction for an FBI agent, which led to Genovese's indictment under the U.S. Economic Espionage Act, which makes it a felony to sell a company's stolen trade secrets ... [Microsoft] has also expressed fears that making its source code public could allow hackers to find security holes in Microsoft products -- though, so far, intruders are doing fine without the source.'"
Microsoft, ever the marketing company and ever the master of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt uses this sting operation to tout once again that open source software MUST be less secure because the source code is out there.
"...expressed fears that making its source code public could allow hackers to find security holes in Microsoft products..."
But theirs is not, because the source code is super-uber-duper Top SECRET.
And that is FUD as usual.
Oddly, the most notable open source OS, Linux, is more secure, partially because of its design (not letting every tom, dick and harry process have access to and control of the kernel) and also in large part due to the fact that people CAN inspect the source code and create fixes for security holes that inevitably emerge.
Security through obscurity has never worked, and one would think Microsoft would be smart enough to realize that by now. They undoubtedly do realize that, but don't want you or I to, otherwise we will not be willing to pony up license fees for their OS when free alternatives are there for the
(legal) downloading.
But never let something good like MS catching pirates pass without turning it into an opportunity to FUD some more.
The real reason they don't want "just anyone" to see the source, or open it up to the public in general, is because they know that probably several thousand people (if not more) will completely re-engineer it and actually make it a relatively secure and/or stable operating system, and they don't want to be upstaged by some 15 year-old kid from Topeka.
Now what they SHOULD do is hold a contest, redesign/engineer Windows, and if you do a good-enough job, you get something... free Xbox360, a job, cash prize, whatever. Or they can mix-and-match components that various people design. They could take the best of all the submissions, have a great, stable OS, then it'd be just like Lin...... err... wait, nevermind, they'll never go for that.
And they said zombies weren't real!
I mean how am I meant to get applications to compile when I don't have the full kernel source?!
Err, you know, Windows has had a stable API (and ABI) since 1.0.
Unlike a certain open source OS with moronic, egomanic developers that change the kernel- and userspace API and ABI at will.