Microsoft Offers A Bounty On Virus Writers

Iphtashu Fitz writes "According to news.com Microsoft will announce a bounty of $250,000 on Wednesday for information on who wrote two recent Windows viruses. The bounty is offered for information that leads to the arrest of the people who released the MSBlast worm and the SoBig virus. Microsoft will officially announce the reward in a joint press conference with the FBI and U.S. Secret Service Wednesday morning. This is the first time a company has offered money for information about the identity of the cybercriminals. Could this be the start of a new trend in going after the writers of viruses & worms?"

Here's an idea..

[greenerx]

they should invest the 250000 into their security team and fix the vulnerabilities instead of chasing after 13 year olds

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Linford of Spamhaus.org says he knows who did it

[Chatmag]

Steve Linford [spamhaus.org] of Spamhaus seems to think he knows who is behind the Fizzer/Sobig/Mimail attacks, and will be releasing the information in the near future.

In the article, he leads one to believe that Fizzer is still active in the wild. As a member of IRC Unity, the group founded to eradicate Fizzer, I have not seen a report of Fizzer in months.

If Steve Linford actually knows, he needs to contact Microsoft. The money would help him pay for the losses incurred by the DDoS attacks against Spamhaus.

Re:I heard they needed skilled people

[tc]

Stop being an apologist for Bill Gates. When he pays for clean water and sanitation for every human being on the planet {and he wouldn't even notice it} or performs some similar act for the greater human good {this would not include hara-kiri - given the mess he would be leaving behind, that would be too much like a coward's way out} then he'll have earned a little of my respect.

Maybe this is a troll, but I'll bite...

Last I checked, Bill Gates was performing similar acts for the greater human good. He's one of the most prolific charitable contributors in history. If you check out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [gatesfoundation.com] you'll notice that they have poured billions of dollars into global health projects. According to their annual financial report for 2002 [gatesfoundation.com] they gave away over $1Bn last year alone.

Re:I heard they needed skilled people

[FireChipmunk]

You mean bridges don't collaspe?

What about the Tacoma Narrow Bridge [bris.ac.uk]?

Part of your comparision falls completely flat, we have been building bridges for thousands of years, while software engineering is at best 50 years old.

+5 Insightful? Try -1 blatantly wrong!

[kylef]

It is also that Windows runs a ton of stupid, random crap in kernel space. Like Windows Media Player. Like Internet Explorer. Like Outlook. Like a ton of office stuff.

This is one of the most blatantly false statements I have seen get modded up to +4 or +5 in a long, long time.

Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, and Outlook do NOT run in kernel mode whatsoever. They may talk to kernel-mode drivers like 95% of all user-mode software does (read from a file, talk to the network), but they absolutely do not run in kernel-mode!

C'mon, people. If you want to bash MS, you can do better than make up ridiculous statements like that.

Re:I heard they needed skilled people

[C10H14N2]

Yes, but he's worth $46 billion.

Consider that most people have net worths of $46 thousand or less, he's doing the equivalent of John Q. Citizen writing two checks for five hundred bucks. Even those who are lucky enough to be equity millionaires, that's like sending one kid to college. If he cashed out everything and shoved it into a 2.25% interest bearing checking account he'd STILL make over a billion dollars the first year.

Besides, he didn't give dime one to a single soul for long after he became a multi-billionaire. Last I recall, "tithing" was considered par for philanthropy and this guy is quite a few points below par on that course. Would you really gush thankful if your local millionaire spent twenty years consuming and hording and then sent one kid to college to save his immortal soul? You probably wouldn't even stop to notice. I'd gander most people would do like a waiter receiving an insulting tip and insist he take his stingy excuse for gratuity and shove it where it came from. Bill Gates' "philanthopy" does not exceed that which is merely beneficial from a tax write-off point of view. He's not being generous at all. He simply knows how to do his taxes, which incidentally means for every billion he sends off to his pet projects, the public coffers lose several hundred million dollars. As the wealthiest person on the planet, I think it is fair to expect real generosity and not just good bookkeeping.

He's a robber-baron and should be treated with the respect one worthy of the title deserves.

Oh please, sir, might I have some more?

Why not reward virus writers?

[Anonymous Coward]

A bounty? Why?

Virus writers do an extremely important service for us -- they demonstrate just how insecure our systems really are.

Seriously, why aren't virus writers owed our thanks? Would you rather they not write viruses, which would lull us into a huge sense of collective false security, leaving us vulnerable to a true Internet apocalypse in the future?

This is exactly analogous to being grateful for having a lot of small earthquakes, because you know that they relieve the geological pressures that would otherwise build up to become a single massive deadly quake.

By pumping out viruses daily, they are keeping us constantly aware of the need to fix our security problems. If the virus writers didn't provide that service for us, then who would? Seriously?

Do you think people would pay any attention if known security vulnerabilities were simply reported on the web? Only by experiencing mass inconvenience and damage could we ever be motivated enough to take Internet security seriously.

-- Anonymous with good reason.