FC: More on terrorists using open source software to wreak havoc [LWN.net]

FC: More on terrorists using open source software to wreak havoc

Posted Jun 6, 2002 17:30 UTC (Thu) by gerdts (guest, #226)
Parent article: FC: More on terrorists using open source software to wreak havoc

The connection that I keep seeing people miss is this one:

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2648128,00.html

Here's the way the break-in likely happened:

A hacker sends the QAZ Trojan to a Microsoft employee's home computer.
The employee connects to the Microsoft corporate network from home.
The QAZ software steals the employee's password files and emails them to the hacker, allowing him later to log on to Microsoft's computers posing as the authorized employee.
From there, the hacker begins creating new MS accounts with higher security clearances and is free to wander around the network.

Was it Al Quaeda or some other terrorist organization that read or modified the source? How many other times has this already happened? With this glowing endorsement by a senior MS executive, I see no reason why any MS code would be allowed in any networked computer that contains sensitive information.

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