Connecticut Man Accused Of Selling Microsoft Code !

A Connecticut computer hacker was arrested yesterday and charged with selling copies of Microsoft Windows proprietary source code.

The United States attorney's office said the hacker, William O. Genovese Jr., 27, of Meriden, Conn., used a Web site to unlawfully distribute the programming blueprints behind the Microsoft NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 operating systems.

"This is someone who stole and attempted to sell for profit some valuable asset of Microsoft," said Tom Rubin, the associate general counsel for Microsoft. "It is our secret recipe, our secret formula like the Coke formula."

The arrest is the most significant legal action to emerge from an F.B.I. investigation into the theft of Microsoft's source code; the inquiry began earlier this year and is continuing.

Though sometimes Microsoft has provided its source code to business partners and government agencies, access is tightly guarded because it can allow software developers to replicate the program and hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in the operating system, which is used on hundreds of millions of computers.

In mid-February, the complaint said, Mr. Genovese obtained a stolen copy of the Windows source code and posted a message on his Web site that he was willing to sell it.
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Source : The New York Times