Microsoft Posts $250,000 Reward for PC Hackers
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Microsoft announced Thursday that it had placed a $250,000 bounty on the heads of the developers and distributors of a nasty computer virus that's been worming its way worldwide for months.
"As part of Microsoft's ongoing security efforts, we constantly look for ways to use a diverse set of tools and develop methodologies to protect our customers," said George Stathakopoulos, general manager of the Trustworthy Computing Group at Microsoft in a press release.
Known as the Conficker (a pun on "configure" and a four-letter German swear word) or Downadup worm , the virus has infected at least 10 million Windows-based computers since it first appeared in October. It's forced the British and French navies to take some systems offline.
Most worrisome is the fact that it doesn't do much — yet. Experts fear it's just waiting for a command to turn all infected machines into a superpowerful "botnet" of zombie PCs that could be used to take down commercial, military or governmental Web sites.
Microsoft's partners in the reward offer include AOL, the Internet governing body ICANN, the domain register Verisign and a host of security companies, including Symantec and F-Secure.
