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Many Hackers Accidentally Send Their Code To Microsoft

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-the-brightest-cookie-in-the-shed dept.

joshgnosis writes "When hackers crash Windows in the course of developing malware, they'll often accidentally agree to send the virus code straight to Microsoft, according to senior security architect Rocky Heckman. 'It's amazing how much stuff we get.' Heckman also said Microsoft was a common target for people testing their attacks. 'The first thing [script kiddies] do is fire off all these attacks at Microsoft.com. On average we get attacked between 7000 and 9000 times per second.'"

1 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How Does It Encapsulate the Source Code? by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 5, Informative
    Not sure why this is modded insightful. RTFA doesn't answer the question, except to say

    When the hacker's system crashes in Windows, as with all typical Windows crashes, Heckman said the user would be prompted to send the error details — including the malicious code — to Microsoft. The funny thing is that many say yes, according to Heckman.

    it doesn't explain how the "error details" comes to be "including the malicious code". He goes on to say

    "People have sent us their virus code when they're trying to develop their virus and they keep crashing their systems," Heckman said. "It's amazing how much stuff we get."

    System crash implies a bluescreen - which further implies a memory dump -- but R-ing TFA doesn't answer the question one way or the other.