Windows leak site Wzor goes dark a day after feds arrest Microsoft mole

Computerworld - The noted Windows leak site Wzor.net was offline Thursday and its Twitter account had disappeared, a day after an ex-Microsoft employee was charged with stealing trade secrets -- including early builds of Windows 7 and Windows 8 -- and sharing them with others.

It's unknown whether there was a connection between Alex Kibkalo, the former Microsoft architect who was arrested Wednesday, and Wzor.net.

According to checks conducted by Computerworld, Wzor.net was offline and unreachable from the U.S., the U.K. and Romania. Websites that verify whether a specific website is up and running -- including Where's It Up and Is It Down Right Now? -- showed that Wzor.net was offline around the world.

"Wzor.net is down for everyone," the Is It Down Right Now? website reported.

Wzor's Twitter account had also vanished by early Thursday. "Sorry, that page doesn't exist," Twitter reported after attempts to access the account.

Kibkalo, a Russian national who worked in Microsoft's Lebanon office when he allegedly shared pre-release code for Windows RT and the internal-only Activation Server SDK (software development kit) with an unidentified French blogger, was arrested and detained yesterday. Wzor.net was a Russian-language website known for its prodigious publishing of leaked information about Windows pre-release builds.

Last month, Wzor leaked an early version of Windows 8.1 Update, the refresh Microsoft is expected to push to customers on April 8.

In the complaint filed with a Seattle federal court Monday -- but unsealed Wednesday -- authorities said instant message logs showed that Kibkalo claimed to have also leaked early builds of Windows 7 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Those versions of Windows were publicly released in 2009 and 2011, respectively.

Kibkalo worked at Microsoft for seven years, from May 2005 until September 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile, which remained available Thursday.

Kibkalo was terminated by Microsoft after an internal investigation, prompted by the discovery of emails from him to the blogger, whose Hotmail account contents had been read by officials in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Investigations (TWCI), a department tasked to protect the company from outside hackers and internal leakers. Kibkalo allegedly used his own Hotmail account to contact the blogger and his SkyDrive account to share code, including the Activation Server SDK.

According to the FBI, Kibkalo also set up a virtual machine on a Redmond, Wash.-based server owned by Microsoft to expedite his code theft and sharing.

During the years 2005-2010, Kibkalo worked for Microsoft's Russian operation before transferring to Lebanon.

Microsoft declined to answer questions about whether the Wzor.net outage was its doing or connected to the Kibkalo case.

As for Kibkalo's arrest and alleged theft, a company spokeswoman said, "We take protection of our intellectual property very seriously, including cooperating with law enforcement agencies who are investigating potential criminal actions by our employees or others."

Wzor.net was offline worldwide on Thursday, a day after a Microsoft mole was arrested for stealing and sharing the company's unreleased code. (Image: Is It Down Right Now?)

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Microsoft to review policies after admitting it searched customer email

IDG News Service - Microsoft promised to subject itself to a more rigorous process before searching through its customers' email accounts in the future after a recent legal case revealed that the company searched for evidence of theft of its trade secrets in a Hotmail account.

A former Microsoft employee named Alex Kibkalo was arrested Wednesday on charges related to alleged leaking of prerelease Windows RT updates and product activation software to a French blogger in July and August 2012.

Court filings revealed that Microsoft's internal investigation involved searching through the French blogger's Hotmail account where it found emails from Kibkalo. Hotmail has since been rebranded as Outlook.com.

"After confirmation that the data was Microsoft's proprietary trade secret, on September 7, 2012, Microsoft's Office of Legal Compliance (OLC) approved content pull of the blogger's Hotmail account," FBI Special Agent Armando Ramirez wrote in a criminal complaint filed with the U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Microsoft also searched through Kibkalo's instant messaging conversations and his account with SkyDrive, the company's cloud file hosting service that's now called OneDrive.

While it appears that the terms of service for Microsoft's online services allows the company to access users' content "to protect the rights and property of Microsoft," among other things, the incident drew criticism from privacy advocates and other users on social media.

"I can't wait for Microsoft's next Scroogled ad, slamming Google for violating the privacy of Gmail users," Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, said on Twitter following the revelations. "Microsoft likes to brag that they have more 'trained privacy professionals' than any other company. What were they doing during HotmailGate?" he said in a separate message.

John Frank, Microsoft's deputy general counsel and vice president for legal and corporate affairs, defended the company's actions Thursday in a blog post, saying the company took "extraordinary actions based on the specific circumstances" and it "applied a rigorous process" before reviewing the content.

"Courts do not, however, issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves," Frank said. "So even when we believe we have probable cause, there's not an applicable court process for an investigation such as this one relating to the information stored on servers located on our own premises."

Microsoft had a dedicated legal team working separately from the internal investigation to review the evidence and meet "a standard comparable to that required to obtain a legal order to search other sites," Frank said, adding that the company's actions were within its policies and applicable law.

While Microsoft hasn't announced any plans to modify its terms of service to disallow this type of internal customer data searches in the future, the company does plan to make some changes to the process that governs this type of investigations.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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