MICROSOFT executives have played down the seriousness of last week鈥檚 hacking
incident, saying the intruders only 鈥済limpsed鈥� the source code, or blueprint,
for a future Microsoft product. The software giant has enlisted the help of the
FBI to investigate the break-in.
The security breach came to light last week when security staff at
Microsoft鈥檚 headquarters in Redmond, Washington, found that internal computer
passwords were being e-mailed to Russia. 鈥淧asswords were being remotely sent to
an e-mail account in St Petersburg,鈥� says a spokeswoman for Microsoft in
Britain. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a deplorable act of industrial espionage.鈥�
Security experts suspect that a virus known as a 鈥渢rojan horse鈥濃�攚hich
can be hidden in an e-mail attachment鈥攚as used by the hacker to gain
access to Microsoft鈥檚 internal network. A trojan can be used by a remote hacker
to do anything from reading e-mail to deleting files.
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鈥淚f they were in for a week, they would have had enough time to download
important source code,鈥� says Eric Chien of Symantec, a maker of anti-virus
software. But if they just viewed it on screen, he says, it is unlikely they
would get anything useful.
The motive for the attack remains unclear. 鈥淎 number of things are possible,鈥�
says Aled Miles, also of Symantec. 鈥淭hey could hold to ransom certain pieces of
knowledge they have on the code. Instead of holding a person to ransom, you hold
their intellectual property.鈥�