TheWorldJournal.com - Technology

Microsoft's Internal System Hacked
By Dan Calloway, TheWorldJournal.com

In what Microsoft is calling a "criminal act," an outside party was able to break in to the corporate network of the Redmond, Washington-based software giant, the company admitted the week of 23 October. "Someone has gotten into the system. We do not know if it was corrupted," said a Microsoft spokeswoman, who asked not to be named. "Microsoft is very confident that the source code remains secure." But the computer attacker may have targeted and stolen source code belonging to Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office applications, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal. If source code was manipulated, Microsoft would have to painstakingly check the code, security experts said. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has been contacted to investigate the hacking attack.

Security experts say that a worm--a virus that makes multiple copies of itself throughout a computer system--first discovered in China this past summer and dubbed "QAZ" was used to gain access to the computer system. A backdoor Trojan horse may have allowed QAZ to enter Microsoft's computer system unnoticed. From a statistical point of view, users should not be too concerned that infected versions of Windows or Microsoft Explorer will be released, said Frank Prince, senior analyst of e-business infrastructure at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. "This is a fast-moving industry. Ultimately, most of what is in code today either must be properly known by [hackers] to use it in the future or become obsolete soon in regard to [updated] changes." Prince said that because of the position Microsoft holds among its many users and developers, this latest security siege befalling the company will put a temporary black mark on the company's security public image. The break-in was discovered by Microsoft security employees who realized passwords were being remotely delivered to an e-mail account in St. Petersburg, Russia, according to The Wall Street Journal.

© October 26, 2000

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