Microsoft Hack Attack November
2000
Hackers may have had access to Microsoft's blueprints
for Windows for three months.
Microsoft admitted on October 27 that they had
discovered an electronic break in to their computer network which
may have resulted in blueprints for software such as Windows and
Office being stolen. A source in the Wall Street Journal said that
it appeared that the hackers had used a Trojan (so-called because,
like the Trojan horse in Greek mythology, it tricks users into believing
that it is an innocuous program) called QAZ to break through Microsoft's
firewall, though Microsoft is also not ruling out the possibility
of a disgruntled employee releasing information to hackers.
The break in was noticed on the previous Wednesday
when security employees observed that passwords were been sent from
the company's network to an email account based in St Petersburg.
Rick Miller, speaking for Microsoft, denounced the attack as 'industrial
espionage', and it has been estimated that the hackers had access
to information for up to three months. The identity of those behind
the break in is not known, and Microsoft is currently working with
the FBI.
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's Chief Executive, speaking
in Stockholm, insisted that hackers had not tampered with any code
and that 'this was an issue of great importance'. Unlike Microsoft's
main competitor for software across the web, Linux, Windows is proprietary
code rather than open source. Any form of piracy could have serious
repercussions for the world's largest software company whose products
are used on most of the world's computers.
Because of its size and animosity towards its business
practices, evident in the recent Department of Justice investigation,
Microsoft has attracted a number of security attacks. Internet Explorer
attracted attention in earlier releases because of numbers of flaws
that could affect security of information, while its web based email
system Hotmail suffered a serious breach earlier this year. The
news that hackers had access to privileged information at the company
has also come at a particularly bad time, as Steve Ballmer had only
recently announced a $1 billion pledge to try and wrest the number
one Internet service position away from AOL.
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