And that dude used to be a software architect at MS!? Wow, MS really does hire anybody these days. From the summary it looks like they both got caught because they were dumb.
Microsoft frisked blogger's Hotmail inbox, IM chat to hunt Windows 8 leaker, court told
An ex-Microsoft worker faces criminal prosecution in the US over allegations he leaked work-in-progress Windows 8 software to a French blogger. Russian national Alex Kibkalo was arrested in Seattle, Washington, on Wednesday, charged with the theft of trade secrets, and held in custody without bail. Kibkalo, who worked for …
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Friday 21st March 2014 09:47 GMT MalcolmTucker
Well, Microsoft head argurer, Brad Smith, was recently featured in "American Lawyer" Magazine. Too bad it wasn't "Above The Law". He had an article about driving a Ferrari and his son wanted to own one. Anyways, it seems that Eddie Cue at Apple reads the same magazine, and is going to beat him to the punch. Eddie put a competitor on the dashboard of the vehicle Brad Smith's son wants. It's just too bad the dental insurer Apple selected can't get it quite right.
Anyways, it's comforting to know that Brad Smith will screw you harder and longer than Durward Bruce Sewell. Brad Smith will also place people, like Pamela Smith, in positions where he'll ask for narrative to help his case. Brad Smith will at least call you in the morning and ask how it was. To compare, Sewell is in it for the stock options money.
But the funny thing about Microsoft, and this is from the perspective of someone whom knows too much from spending time online. Talking about things normally shared around the water cooler, happens often, and even online. In one situation, I was discussing the idea with a friend-- Perhaps Steve Jobs (when he was alive). I suggested, that a large Washington-state company, a state who used to sell apples, desired to purchase a larger iPhone-like device. However, Microsoft just couldn't get it right. Today, that's called an iPad. Maybe Microsoft has heard about it.
More importantly, it can be frustrating to work for Brad and Bill at Microsoft. Still, Brad Smith seems to not understand technology, and competitive non-compete agreements in the digital age.
Indeed, I had to wait a year to tell Steve Jobs about the technology needed, and prototype platforms. I was offered a job but couldn't accept because of the NDA which also covers patents and intellectual property. So I just decided to share the concept device with someone who could do it right. Google does it right. Just look up Johnny Chung Lee, the inventor of the Microsoft Kinekt. Likely, the Marketing firm of Waggener Edstrom found him, and Johnny went to work at Google after sucking the idea out of his head.
Often, it's usually Microsoft employees, or outside marketing companies such as this Waggener Edstrom, or the Blue-Badge employee who took the real good idea of a product and move up the ladder. If they can claim it as their idea, and bring to market, Microsoft will create an ad budget, which Steve Ballmer enjoys. Often, its these outside third party companies that call Brad Smith to sue former employees.
I imagine this "hacker" developed the specification or documents which the R&D teams in India developed. That is subject to disclosure and review.
Still, these marketing folks, like Pam Edstrom and Melissa Waggoner enjoy the art of the gab about a product they say their PR firm found, or possible leaks. They are the ones that whine to people like Brad Smith and Pamela Passman, to bring people to King County Court.
This is the only court in the land that will say a NDA is more valuable than being a positive influence in society, or working to create new ideas. Still, It's just too bad Microsoft culture is one where it's more valuable to claim someone else's ideas than providing a paycheck. Microsoft culture is one which incents the employee's ability to force others to unemployment options, and increase taxpayer-funded welfare spending programs.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 13:27 GMT dorsetknob
Unreleased versions of Windows Live Messenger ""bring it on""
Quote
"Confidential data allegedly uploaded by Kibkalo to his personal Windows Live SkyDrive account between July and August 2012 included pre-release software updates of Windows 8 RT and ARM devices, Microsoft's Activation Server Software Development Kit (SDK), and unreleased versions of Windows Live Messenger, according to Microsoft's subsequent investigation."
unquote
Perhaps Microsuck might release this unreleased versions of unreleased versions of Windows Live MessengerMessenger to either work in tandem or replace skype
because Skype is total crap
I cannot use skype on my pc as it says my password is incorrect (please reset)
yet same password works fine on android phone.
the messenger software was very good and i used it all the time now its skype only i don't bother to use it anymore
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Thursday 20th March 2014 20:33 GMT Don Jefe
Flight risk? If our 'security' measures can't prevent a foreigner, awaiting trial, from fleeing the country I've got a great fucking idea for solving our budget woes.
The first step will be to shitcan about 90% of the 'security' personnel we've hired since 2001 and send the senior management team from all the agencies involved to Freedom Resort and Waterpark, located near beautiful Guantanamo Bay. There they enjoy the same open air dog kennels enjoyed by so many others. During their stay they will attend daily informational seminars with complimentary water based exercise activities and intense educational activities that will help the guests identify fraud, and possibly treason, should the choose to leave Freedom Resort.
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Friday 21st March 2014 14:01 GMT Tom 13
Russian national arrested in the US? Flight risk?
Putin is doing his best Hitler/Stalin impression on the world stage and you think a Russian national who is safely ensconced in the US is a flight risk?
Heck a clever prosecutor looking for a quick confession might threaten to deport him if he doesn't confess immediately. With a carrot of once convicted he'll have a 7 year sentence at a minimum security club fed facility.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 19:29 GMT Charles Manning
Re: Win 8 trade secrets
s/millions/billions/
That's the bit that gets stock holders pissy.
Pretty much all OS expenditure since XP has lead to products that customers want less than XP. Surely $10-20bn of expenditure* should actually improve product desirabliity.
(*) Based on Vista being around $6bn .
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Thursday 20th March 2014 21:30 GMT asdf
Re: Win 8 trade secrets
>as opposed to giving away millions of hours to developing an operating system nobody wants or uses.
curl -s -I www.theregister.co.uk | grep Server
Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Debian) mod_apreq2-20090110/2.8.0 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1
You sir are a fail. Its a good think a certain nameless freetard OS exists to give you a forum to spout your ignorance huh?
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Friday 21st March 2014 14:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: All in marketing
My experience is that all marketing/sales types grab a copy of the customer list to keep at home as soon as they think it is safe to do so. It's something they can offer their next employer:
"Yeah, I have a list of all my previous customers with whom I've built a good relationship over the years. I should be able to convince them to switch suppliers..."
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Friday 21st March 2014 14:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What sort of idiot uses the companies "own" email system
Well, I might. But only if I were certain it was linked to some other idiot in the company that I didn't like. And considering all the things besides the email account I'd need to check on, yeah DVD copy and an internet cafe would be far easier.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 14:54 GMT Tom 38
So many WTFs!
Confidential data allegedly uploaded by Kibkalo to his personal Windows Live SkyDrive account…
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…emails sent from a mail.ru account to a Hotmail address maintained by the blogger. The two allegedly chatted about the illicit exchange of information using MSN chat.
How not to leak from your employer.
Russian national Alex Kibkalo was arrested yesterday and ordered held without bail
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Kibkalo, who worked for the software giant in Lebanon and Russia
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Kibkalo, who was based in Lebanon at the time of the alleged leak
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The case is filed as US v. Kibkalo in the US District Court, Western District of Washington.
TEAM AMERICA WORLD POLICE
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Thursday 20th March 2014 18:02 GMT Tom 38
Re: So many WTFs!
world police how? He was arrested in Seattle for a crime against an American company. Not sure what you are getting at.
He didn't commit the crimes in America. They are charging him in America. They are American crimes because the company is American. Hence, TEAM AMERICA WORLD POLICE - someone does something wrong somewhere else in the world, America involves itself.
Missing from the story is how someone who works in Russia and Lebanon ended up arrested in Washington without extradition. Presumably MS asked him to fly over for a chat...
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Friday 21st March 2014 00:30 GMT Trevor_Pott
Re: So many WTFs!
"They are American crimes because the company is American."
Actually, wouldn't the company he committed crimes against be an entity registered in Lebanon, presumably "Microsoft Lebanon"? That is a separate and distinct legal entity from "Microsoft USA". Or at least, so I am told by tax lawyers...
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Friday 21st March 2014 00:23 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: So many WTFs!
He was arrested in Seattle for a crime against an American company.
Holy damn! The poor company!!!
Seriously, anyone not totally braindamaged by the sheeple-targeting/IP-defending media permashitstorm would realize that one could at best talk about an attack on the financial wellbeing of the shareholders of the company.
Now.
Defrauding shareholders is politically correct these days, so the accusation would have to be re-engineered into one about "irretrievably harming potential future tax revenues", which in the current climate can only be interpreted by a popular court as the most heinous crime of lèse-majesté, and thus we could go liberally medieval on the perp's arse, all in good conscience.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 15:19 GMT Hans 1
>The blogger implicated in the case reportedly admits blogging about the information he received as well as selling Windows Server activation keys on eBay.
Selling activation keys on ebay ? ouch^10^10
>Access to the software development kit could help a hacker trying to reverse-engineer the code used to protect against software piracy and thereby circumvent these controls, according to the charging papers.
As if there were not enough keygen's for Microsoft software ...
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Thursday 20th March 2014 19:39 GMT Old Handle
This is an important point. I appears that instead of getting a court order or anything (which presumably they could have done if this is now the subject of a criminal complaint) they simply took advantage of the fact that they owned the mail server and peeked away. That strikes me as very questionable, at least ethically, if not legally. I suppose there might be fine print in the ToS for this scenario.
If this post mysteriously vanishes, it's probably because I tried to send it from a Windows PC.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 22:20 GMT eulampios
it's not only his employer's mail server
it is also used by a few hundred other million people. Otherwise it would have been @microsoft.com, @redmond.com or @windows.com
This news should be advertised much more. Think about all those squandered millions on the "don't get scroogled" campaign? Yeah,
-- Google reads your emails on gmail, and if their scripts do it for them to serve you ads, our security stuff personally reads it on outlook/hotmail when we want to put you in jail! Still not willing to migrate from gmail to outlook?!
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Friday 21st March 2014 00:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Re:
> Umm. Yes. When you use your employer's mail server (or one that they own), you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Umm. No. At least not without qualifying by jurisdiction.
I suggest, for example, that you look up the relevant jurisprudence in Spain and find out how your employer (or anybody else, without a court order) cannot go looking through your email, even if it's the company's own servers.
Even in the UK, not exactly known for being a champion of individual rights, your company is likely in trouble unless they have clearly and explicitly notified the employee that their use of company resources may be monitored (so I have been informed).
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Friday 21st March 2014 08:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
@ Peter2
"Host your email with us in our cloudy service, it's really secure and you can trust us not to go reading through anything on our systems that we might find interesting. Honest!"
Like Google doesn't???
If you think you have ANY privacy using companies like MS and Google, you're deluded...
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Thursday 20th March 2014 19:32 GMT bigtimehustler
It is crazy he was using hotmail to do this, but it does raise a question. Was this his work hotmail account, or a personal hotmail account. If it was the latter he will probably have some good defence in that all of the evidence was obtained by illegal tapping of his communications...it matters little that microsoft run hotmail in much the same way it matters little that AT&T run phone communications but can not listen to your phone calls. So the devil in this one will be in the detail.
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Friday 21st March 2014 00:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
> It is crazy he was using hotmail to do this,
Except that if you actually read the article, he wasn't. He was using his mail.ru account, which is distinctly not Hotmail. It was the other bloke who was rather ill-advisedly using Hotmail and ended up dropping Ivan in the shit.
With a bit of luck he can just deny that the @mail.ru address in question was his. Bonne chance to a US court trying to get access to mail.ru's logs.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 20:52 GMT Arm
Isn't it totally against Microsoft's privacy policy to search and read their users' Hotmail account? The blogger doesn't even work for Microsoft. How often does Microsoft read their users' email? Under what circumstances do they discard any presumption of privacy any do whatever they want with their users' data?
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Thursday 20th March 2014 23:19 GMT Fill
Re: Microsoft can just read anyone's hotmail account?
I'll answer my own question after reading their ToS:
"Microsoft reserves the right to review materials posted to the Communication Services and to remove any materials in its sole discretion."
They define Communication Services to include email, chat, forums, file storage, etc.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 23:55 GMT bigtimehustler
Re: Microsoft can just read anyone's hotmail account?
Actually this really does not matter, people believe whats ToS say far too often, they do not trump law, especially so in some countries more than others. UK courts for example have time and time again said they make no different if they go against what the law says can be done. With regards to privacy and illegal wire tapping it is pretty much the same in the US. Now, as for the countries he is currently in, well I am not sure, but ultimately he is going to have to be tried in the US at some point if the extradition is accepted and so US law will apply. Meaning they can not access his private email address and just read it at their fancy regardless of what the ToS say.
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Friday 21st March 2014 02:04 GMT ReverendTed
A lot of comments seem to suggest people think the Microsoft employee used his work e-mail account and that's what Microsoft searched. That'd be one thing, but it's worth clarifying that Microsoft searched the BLOGGER's Hotmail account.
I'm surprised more isn't being made out of Microsoft's attacks on Google for privacy, going so far as to coin the term "Scroogled" for the way Gmail's automated systems parse e-mail content to deliver advertising. This sure puts that in perspective.
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Friday 21st March 2014 03:56 GMT Mikel
Brilliant
Let the whole world know you are snooping their Hotmail just to jail the one employee who got the info out before the other twenty. Spend six months paying astroturfers to pretend you were the wronged party and acted within the TOS, as if that makes it all better now. I can't wait to hear Frank Shaw's spin on this.
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Friday 21st March 2014 21:42 GMT pacman7de
Following a tipoff from a source?
'following a tipoff from a source: it's claimed the firm looked through its servers and uncovered evidence that Kibkalo had emailed the blogger's Microsoft-hosted Hotmail account to leak "proprietary and confidential trade secrets."`
That's not what the blogger said, he states that he contacted Microsoft and asked them to confirm the legitimacy of the files, Microsoft then rifled through *his* Hotmail account, surely a violation of privacy.
"If you're wondering how exactly the accused got caught, it's because the blogger contacted Microsoft in September 2012 to verify the Windows 8 code Kibkalo sent." link