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Overhype

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Nov 5th 2003 7:48am





Microsoft Creates Anti-Virus Bounty To Help Track Down Virus Writers

from the Bill-Gates-has-a-posse dept

What do you if you're in an unchartered area with no reasonable law enforcement, and criminals are running rampant? You convince everyone to become the "enforcement" arm and find someone rich enough to pay them to help fight crime. Microsoft can't be bothered to fix a few of the holes in their programs that make it incredibly easy to pass on viruses, so instead, they're setting aside $5 million for anti-virus bounty hunters who can track down anyone responsible for worms, trojan horses or viruses. The rewards will be given out in $250,000 wads of cash from Bill Gates wallet increments. So, now, who's going to round up an anti-virus posse?

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  1.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Nov 5th, 2003 @ 8:47am

    re: bounty for virus writers

    Will they still pay the bounty to hunters that find virus writers who turn out to be high school kids from Malaysia or some other country without any laws under which they could be prosecuted either in their own country or extradited?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
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    Tony Preston, Nov 5th, 2003 @ 11:34am

    Hurrah!

    I think this is the first time I have applauded an action by Microsoft.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    nil-ram, Nov 5th, 2003 @ 6:18pm

    Bah!!!

    How about they give the $250,000 to those who write viruses, but don't release them -- paying them for QA in effect.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    Nicolas, Feb 9th, 2010 @ 9:49am

    Nice old school way of attracting talent...show them the money. I never thought of antivirus authors as being talent you actively recruited, but I suppose someone must be writing that code. I wonder how this program ended up working out..

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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