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?
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Nov 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?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Tony Preston, 5 Nov 2003 @ 11:34am

    Hurrah!

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

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      nil-ram, 5 Nov 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.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Nicolas, 9 Feb 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..

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.