Source Code

[BirdofPrey]

Prepare for a barrage of viruses, parts of the source for 2k and NT4 havd been leaked, so virus writers (or the 1337 hax0rs they think they are) will tear this source apart and find the vunerablities. M$ havnt said whats been leaked, but they never do so it could be the whole thing!

Story links here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3484545.stm), here (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/13/1076548201785.html) and here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38314-2004Feb12.html)

[tuBBymAN]

damn microsoft as they say in the world is not enough "Can't you people keep anything locked up!"

[Drazhar]

te he he . . . locked up

[BirdofPrey]

well, m$ let corperations and unis have it for research purposes, so that could be the leak!

[Jynx]

It is basically the whole code, over 600Meg of what looks like C code (so i have been told)

[SlyDave]

The full source with resources is 41gig :) so its not the full thing, the leak is belived to be a CD's worth, but only sizes from 200 - 300 Meg have been seen on networks.

I highly doubt you are going to see many problems caused by this.

[putty_thing]

i've got it - apparently there are some humerous comments in there

will tear this source apart and find the vunerablities.

did anyone really have problems finding vunerabilities before?

[BirdofPrey]

Depends, now they have a proper easier way to do it. But its only parts of the source, the networking code and file systems after speaking to people who had a gander. This could be a big thing for the open source movement, ntfs support, as long as the source isnt copied word for word, as this could be claimed as a copyright infringment. But you could juts say you experemented and reverse enginerred it!

One thing is if SCO get this source and find a hint of unix code, m$ could be in trouble as they dont own the unix copyrights anymore!

[SlyDave]

SCO have no ground to stand on, Novell gave everyone a full pardon on behalf of them, read up. :) SCO got owned by someone that owns the orginal rights to the rights they sold to to a company that IBM bought.. if any of that makes sense :D

Basicly, SCO can stick it up there arses, no one likes them and there company will suffer becuase of what they are trying to do. Takeing on the Open Source Community, lol. thats like 1 man vs an army, good luck I say, they are gonna need it.

[BirdofPrey]

Like i have that much time im a student :)

[BirdofPrey]

This is interesting:

Dunham and others spent hours looking for clues in the code, a mix of assembler, C and C++ programming languages. The leaked Windows 2000 code contained 30915 files and a whopping 13.5 million lines of code, he said. And the Windows NT breach had 95,103 files and 28 million lines. Both were available as zip files being exchanged readily on the Internet, Dunham said.

"You have a mixture of good code and junk that doesn't make sense," he said. "It looks like someone was playing around with it."

It's not clear whether numerous profanities that are written into the code -- invisible to front-end users of the programs -- were put there by Microsoft developers or those who got their hands on the files after them Pilfered from here (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech/02/13/microsoft.source/index.html) by the way

Looks like a large leak, and also possibly why there are so many windows errors! Or someone playing a joke on M$.

Also theres this, suggesting the possible source of the code leak:

Developers looking at the code said it appeared to come from a "core dump" file generated by one of Mainsoft's Linux-run machines, said Nate Mook, editor of BetaNews.com. Core dump files are created when a computer crashes to temporarily store unsaved data in the machine's hard drive. But Dunham said that while Mainsoft's name appeared in the code at least three times, hackers could have added the information to throw off investigators.

Now Mainsoft made some windows stuff that allows interface with unix servers, and there are numerous references to the company in the code. But this could all of course be enginered to frame M$ and throw the FBI and M$ off the sent.

[tuBBymAN]

the plot thickens!

[Jynx]

This story is clearly going to run for weeks and weeks, its going to be interesting to follow.

[SlyDave]

"Blame it on the hackers" - heard it all before.

[tuBBymAN]

i like the idea of windows full of swearing if only we could see it!