:: Deepquest ::

Months after launching a federal investigation, authorities yesterday arrested a Connecticut man for selling the source code for Microsoft’s Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 operating systems over the Internet.

ps: what’s the use of selling an old system code source? Redmon didn’t say that 2000 and XP had brand new code?

William P. Genovese, 27, of Meriden, Conn., is charged with unlawfully distributing a trade secret, which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence upon conviction.

A Microsoft lawyer told The New York Times the arrest was significant, given the value of the proprietary code. “It is our secret recipe, our secret formula like the Coke formula,” said associate general counsel Tom Rubin.

In recent months, the software giant has extended its code to business partners and governments but tried to tightly guard it from hackers who could use the massive amount of coding to find vulnerabilities to exploit. When the code theft was first reported in February, some speculated the thief took advantage of Microsoft’s “shared source” program instead of it being an inside job. Other news organizations suggested the culprit may have been a software developer in the hacker underground.

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