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Microsoft Security

Microsoft Employee Allegedly Hacked AltaVista 293

Posted by CowboyNeal from the stolen-code-writes-itself dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Seattle PI has a story about Microsoft employee who worked on the MSN Search initiative having allegedly broken into AltaVista computers and stolen prorietary technology. However, the illegal break-in happened before he was hired by Microsoft. The question is, did Microsoft know anything about it? How much code was being written into MSN Search?"
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Microsoft Employee Allegedly Hacked AltaVista More

Microsoft Employee Allegedly Hacked AltaVista

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  • Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rd4tech ( 711615 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:23AM (#9660689)
    Microsoft acknowledged yesterday that Chavet is a Microsoft employee but declined to name the team on which he works.
    Too Obvious

    However, three other people with knowledge of Chavet's Microsoft employment confirmed that he has been working on the MSN Search effort
    Too unconfirmed

    But, if the guy is such an expert inthe search field, isn't it posible that source code was his? How would that impact everything from a legal point?

    • Re:Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arieswind ( 789699 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:28AM (#9660711) Homepage
      Because, most companies make you sign an agreement that anything you write becomes the property of the company, so you just cant pick up and take everything you've written with you when you leave.

      • Re:Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by rd4tech ( 711615 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:29AM (#9660725)
        So what if you do sign that, you do go to the next job, and you do the same type of job for a more popular company. and the previous suckers decide to sue the heck out of you just to extarct a huge settlement from the bigger company? Even if you didn't remember one single line, how'll you prove it?

        • Re:Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by arieswind ( 789699 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:32AM (#9660734) Homepage
          Prove what? If you worked for AltaVista, wrote their search engine, quit, joined Microsoft, and wrote the same exact thing, then yes, you can and probably will be sued

          • Re:Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:5, Informative)

            by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:56AM (#9660868)
            It's also not a new practice for Microsoft. Examine the David Cutler case, where Microsoft hired away one of the core developers of VMS to help create a new, server class operating system. That new operating system was called "NT", and Mr. Cutler hired away his old team from DEC and pasted in quite a lot code from the planned but cancelled "Prism" release of VMS. The lawsuits were quite nasty, and DEC decided not to press for triple damages on every copy of NT sold in return for NT always being supported on the new Alpha chips from DEC. Of course, Intel then stole the technologies of the Alpha to use in the Pentium IV, so that guarantee became pretty useless pretty soon, and the NT on Alpha actually never worked well due to its lack of support. But hey, better to settle for a pittance in out-of-court settlement rather than actually make the thieves pay for it by breaking their fiscal back in court, right? After all, what's good for a big business is good for America, right? And it's better to let a thief get away with it and save your lawyer's fees than make sure they can never do it again and teach a valuable lesson to other large corporations, right? The hard lessons of David Cutler stealing VMS to create NT worked really well to prevent Intel stealing the Alpha technologies to create the Pentium IV, right?

            • Re:Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:4, Interesting)

              by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @11:17AM (#9661263) Homepage Journal
              Also, there is the matter of Gates and Allen dumpster diving at Dartmouth to get the guts of their Microsoft Altair Basic, and Gates, Allen and Ballmer paying the author of QDOS a pittance to get the source and "innovate" their MS-DOS from it. This is SOP for Microsoft. I'm not surprised. The surprising thing about this whole affair is the fact that this guy GOT CAUGHT.

              • Yeah and also that damn Einstein... (Score:5, Insightful)

                by ArcticCelt ( 660351 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @12:40PM (#9661626)
                Yeah and also that damn Einstein who stole the work of Newton first then butchered most of the stuff and claimed that it was obsolete and gave us that relativity thingy. Because we all know that all the inventions and discoveries of human kind are never based on the previous discoveries of the people before us. Of course this is absolutely not the basic principle of existence of our whole civilization. We all Gates haters know that.
                • You've been watching too much Family Guy. Please note that basing his work on the discoveries (i.e. ideas) of Newton but making significant innovations is not infringment. Stealing the papers for "Smith's Theory of Relativity" (the Family Guy reference) would be.

                  Also, note that all of Newton's work is in the public domain now (and in the early 1900's, when Einstein came up with his theory) anyway.
              • Umm.. how exactly would the guts of Dartmouth Basic (a compiled language, written for the PDP processor composing hundreds of K of source) help MS create Altair Basic (an interpreted language, in 8080 assembly that was less than 4k in size and was only barely similar to DM Basic)?

                Methinks you've been listening to too many urban myths and jumping to conclusions.

                I have read a comment from gates in which he admits to dumpster diving for operating system listings to understand how others wrote code, but nothi

              • Re:Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:4, Interesting)

                by man_of_mr_e ( 217855 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @04:13PM (#9662790)
                Oh, and Tim Patterson, the author of QDOS was indeed paid a "pittance" initially, but as soon as MS got the IBM contract, they hired Patterson and he became one of the first "Microsoft Millionaires".

                Have you even made a cursury examination of the events you seem so certain about?
            • Big accusation there. To what, precisely, are you referring? Or are you trying to pull a SCO on us? Alpha was already losing the technology race in the PII timeframe. Let's see some details.

              • Re:What in P4 is stolen from Alpha? (Score:4, Informative)

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10, 2004 @12:36PM (#9661604)
                I think he incorrectly stated Pentium IV. DEC did sue [cnn.com] Intel over infringements on 10 of their technologies used in Alpha chips for the inclusion in Pentium Pro and Pentium II. They ended up settling the case by cross licensing and Intel's purchase of DEC's manufacturing operations.

                What's more telling is this quote from DEC v. Intel: TRUE FACTS [vsm.com.au]
                Mr. Palmer quoted a passage from the Corporate Focus feature in the August 26, 1996 Wall Street Journal. In the article, entitled "Intel Shifts Its Focus To Long-Term Original Research," Intel COO Craig Barrett is quoted as saying, "Now that we're at the head of the class and there's nothing left to copy."

                Said CEO Andy Grove, "We're a big banana now... we can't rely on others to do our research and development for us."

                I am working from my memory here. IIRC, Intel was scared silly over the potential of IBM-Apple alliance (which then included Motorola over Apple's uneasiness to be allied with IBM alone) to create an uber-chip called PowerPC. Intel was stuck with 486 without having a clear direction where to go. DEC approached Intel and they discussed the possibility of Intel adopting DEC's technologies. But Intel decided to work alone and created the Pentium line, surprising everybody including AIM. It turned out that Intel managed to do so by using DEC's technologies.
            • Examine the David Cutler case, where Microsoft hired away one of the core developers of VMS to help create a new, server class operating system.

              Umm, Cutler quit DEC in a fit of pique over the amount of autonomy he had to run projects. He took his team with him.

              Now, Microsoft aren't above poaching staff. They did it to Borland, everyone knows. But Cutler is a different story.

              NT on Alpha actually never worked well due to its lack of support.

              NT on Alpha didn't get much support 'cos no-one bought it! Al
        • >Even if you didn't remember one single line, how'll you prove it?

          Well, they also typically make you sign a non-compete. They don't have to prove that you are re-using source code you wrote for them, they can go and get a TRO to keep you from working at a company that they can convince a judge is their competition.

          In my admittedly limited experience, this doesn't happen that much, tho. Only twice at the company I've worked for the last 10+ years.

          Once two guys quit at the same time and the higher-ups

          • Well, they also typically make you sign a non-compete.

            These aren't binding in many states.

            they sent the lawyers out after them and threatened to make their lives miserable if they went to work at this other company

            That would be an actionable offense in some states; a quick road to early retirement for the party so treated.

            C//
        • Even if you didn't remember one single line, how'll you prove it?

          In this case, he had copied large slabs of code to his PC. So down the road, MS will have to prove that they don;t have any Altavista code.

          MS has made a policy of luring away key staff of leading companies in areas they want to move into, and often been accused of blatantly stealing technology. Even when they've lost in court, they usually win -- making a small cash settlement after they've won the market and destroyed all competition.

      • Re:Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by wideBlueSkies ( 618979 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:58AM (#9660878) Journal
        My company gets around this by forcing you to forfeit your options and other vested financial incentives if you quit and move to a company that they label as a competitor.

        More corporate bullying. So since we're a banking firm, folks are forced to leave for mostly insurance, and other financial (like mutual fund houses), and even shipping companies like UPS. But nobody ever leaves our bank for another bank.

        Unless the other bank wants you so badly that they compensate for the lost incentives. And they'd probably only do this for someone who's an expert at what they do. This brings us back to the original question..once you're there, how do you (or ou new employer) avoid getting sued because you're writing the same or similiar stuff?

        wbs.

    • Re:Seems like this is happening a lot lately... (Score:5, Informative)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:28AM (#9660713)
      But, if the guy is such an expert inthe search field, isn't it posible that source code was his? How would that impact everything from a legal point?

      When you write code in a work for hire relationship, you do not own the code you wrote. Your employer owns it, and when you and your employer break up you lose all access to it.

      Besides, the charges right now don't center around the source code, they center arround the claim that he illegally accessed a computer system (by using a friend's account) and then caused electronic "damage" to it. This really is more of an ex-employee hacking case than a source code ownership issue right now.

  • Bored of these games. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Masque ( 20587 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:23AM (#9660691)
    Sounds like someone in this Monopoly(TM) just landed on Go To Jail.

  • Microsoft not involved yet. (Score:5, Informative)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:24AM (#9660692)
    The question is, did Microsoft know anything about it? How much code was being written into MSN Search?

    And if you RTFA, those questions are still unanswered.

    The man in question here was a former AltaVista employee, and he allegedly downloaded the secret source code for the crawling engine after leaving the company, but before working for Microsoft.

    It seems that so far Microsoft has not been implicated in the investigation at all, and nobody's accusing him of having introduced AltaVista's code into MSN's project. It's an interesting possiblity, but so far there's no authorty making that link.
    • Stealing is wrong, but AltaVista kinda sucks. I'm sure the brainiacs at Microsoft can come up with something better than AltaVista. In time we will be able to see if they can knock off Google. I'm sure they will embed search technology into thier new OSes, so that would be a huge advantage right there.

      --
      3 new Gmail invitations availiable [retailretreat.com]

      • /. readers wets pants, reaches for new Depends... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @10:00AM (#9660891) Homepage
        Stealing is wrong, but AltaVista kinda sucks.

        Kinda what I thought, as in "so what" and "perhaps THAT'S why the new MSN test search is SO DAMN SLOW".

        And if you read the story (RTFA?), you also learn that this guy was a lead developer of the codebase he hacked into, so it's probible he already knew enough to splice it into The New MSN, if he's like 99.9% of all techies, he already has copies of some of the code burned to CD from when he worked there.

        This is really not a Microsoft issue, although Slashdotters will wet their pants over this, blind to the fact this took place YEARS before this guy came to M$, and his "excuse" is kind of understandable: He wanted to see how "his" baby had evolved since he left AV. Maybe, maybe not. But still not the "Micro$oft" smoking gun....

    • Re:Microsoft not involved yet. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:38AM (#9660769)
      It seems that so far Microsoft has not been implicated in the investigation at all

      Oh come on, why let the facts get in the way of bashing Microsoft? You're aware you're reading slashdot right?

    • Heh.. I know that AltaVista's code is on one of those machines at MicroSoft... Time to get the FBI crime teams in and confiscate some (ALL!) of the servers.

      Wheeeeeeeeeee!
    • It seems that so far Microsoft has not been implicated in the investigation at all, and nobody's accusing him of having introduced AltaVista's code into MSN's project.
      I hope you meant "nobody important," or "nobody with any authority," because accusing Microsoft is exactly what everyone in this discussion is doing.

  • Quick. someone tell (Score:5, Funny)

    by rebeka thomas ( 673264 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:24AM (#9660693)
    Someone tell Ken Brown of AdTI. I hear they're very interested in exposing the truth of this kind of thing. nonliteral copying, thieving code, stolen from__ oh it's OK if it's given to MS and they'll ignore it?

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:24AM (#9660698)
    AltaVista demands that anyone using MSN search pay them $699.

  • Warning (Score:4, Funny)

    by ultrabot ( 200914 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:24AM (#9660699)
    This is an example of what can happen when you don't have a centrally controlled company bearing the responsibility and managing the Intellectual Prop... oh wait, nevermind.

    • Re:Warning (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tehanu ( 682528 )
      In a case like this, open-source is actually better. You could just look through the code to see if they actually stole the code and used it in a competing program. Quick, easy, simple. However in this case, if Altavista suspects their code is in MSN, they will most likely have to drag MS through a nasty long court case to see the code to check. They are not guaranteed to win. It will take a lot of money in lawyer's fees and drain people's attention from the business. It will take ages and ages (giving

  • Microsoft allegedly commits crime (Score:3, Funny)

    by damm0 ( 14229 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:24AM (#9660700) Homepage Journal
    In other news, school-age child packs own lunch.

  • Way to go (Score:2, Funny)

    by obli ( 650741 )
    way to go, they could at least have attacked a good search engine if they wanted to be better competitors.

  • Been there before (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:27AM (#9660708) Homepage
    For years there had been idle speculation about how much stolen code (GPL or otherwise) was in Windows. Yet when the portions of Windows 2000 source code were leaked, MS was found to be squeaky clean. But don't let me stand between you and inevitable tin foil hats.
    • So you think that stolen code would be like a shuny new watch? It will get modified heavily to fit the existing structures, it's CODE. But I might be wrong...

    • Re:Been there before (Score:5, Informative)

      by stubear ( 130454 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:37AM (#9660767)
      Not to mention that Microsoft offers much larger portions of their source code through their Shared Source licensing program. If they had stolen code in their software I doubt they'd let the world have a peak.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:38AM (#9660770)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • For years there had been idle speculation about how much stolen code (GPL or otherwise) was in Windows. Yet when the portions of Windows 2000 source code were leaked, MS was found to be squeaky clean. But don't let me stand between you and inevitable tin foil hats.

      Actually, Microsoft has been proven in court to have stolen code more than once. My guess is that since it is so difficult to prove such a thing when MS keeps the code hidden (and still hides much of it to this day even though they've had year

  • ...but search results at http://search.msn.com look similar to the results given by google. When I searched for "linux vs microsoft" a month back, it showed 0 results...pretty weak, huh? Well, I should've tried "linux vs windows". When I tried it a couple of minutes ago, it's working damn fine. Looks like M$ is in a hurry to start competing with google and altavista.

  • After RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by deadlinegrunt ( 520160 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:29AM (#9660719) Homepage Journal
    According to the FBI affidavit, Chavet told investigators that he worked on the AltaVista source code while at the company and logged into the AltaVista system after leaving because he "was 'curious' about the evolution of the source code after his departure."

    Curiosity was framed damnit! Curiosity is always framed. It's ignorance that did it.
  • What ... Microsoft stealing ideas from other people ? Never .. Next thing we know IE will come with tabbed browsing ...
    • Now that's a real innovation, I've been using IE for years (yeah sure) and I haven't seen tabbed browsing :) When I go surf the IE tabs will help me?
    • How do you steal an idea? Did this person go to AltaVista HQ in the middle of the night in a ninja suit, rappel down from the rooftop, and pilfer this particular idea from the CEO's safe?

      It's information, and it wants to be FREEEEE!! This guy didn't steal anything. He liberated this information, and should be celebrated as the freedom fighter he is!

      • He liberated this information, and should be celebrated as the freedom fighter he is!

        No, if this story is correct, he hasn't "freed" it, he's smuggled it out of its AltaVista jail and re-incarcerated it in the Microsoft Super-Max prison.

        If he'd (illegally) GPLed it, then it would be "free" and hiding in the "freedom-fighter"/"terrorist"s house, and enemy forces would use this as an excuse to engage in punitive destruction of GPL-supporting villages.

  • Why steal? (Score:5, Informative)

    by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:31AM (#9660730) Homepage
    Why steal - Microsoft hired one of the key guys behind Altavista, Daniel Feussner. He worked on microsoft.com search.

    Unfortunately for all, he was fired (and later died) after stealing & reselling large amounts of company software. Some details at http://www.compaqsucks.com/wwwboard/messages/545.h tml [compaqsucks.com]. But he'd been with MS for several years at that point.

  • This explains why the MSN search engine [msn.com] sucks so much and is so slow. Proofs are really too obvious this time, sorry.

  • Better to be pre-emptive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by orionware ( 575549 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:33AM (#9660740)
    I always make sure that I have copies of the source code of applications I have worked on so in case something happens with my employer I WON'T have to use nefarious means to retrieve what is mine.

    I know many might say that employers own the intellectual property that you generate while working for them, but I don't agree. If I develop something innovative whiile working there, it's mine. If I come up with a solution for a problem am I supposted to forget the solution and never use it again if I go elsewhere?

    Let them sue me. Hard to get water from a stone.
    • If I develop something innovative whiile working there, it's mine.

      That's why you should always design any complex algorithm in pseudocode first. The company owns the actual implementation/documentation/source code. You keep the algorithm in your head. That way every time you reuse that algorithm, it's a clean room implementation.
    • They paid you for your work, morally they own it, not you. Its really no different then if they bought something from you.. You got paid, they got 'stuff'.

      And you signed the agreements to back morality up in court...

      Of course you cant forget the basis of your solution and the knowledge you gained, but the actual solution doesn't belong to you.

      That is a cost of working for someone else.
    • I know many might say that employers own the intellectual property that you generate while working for them, but I don't agree. If I develop something innovative whiile working there, it's mine.

      Unless your contract says otherwise, any code you write for your employer is theirs under copyright law as a "work for hire". So if you want your innovative work to be yours, you should make sure your contract says so.

      If I come up with a solution for a problem am I supposted to forget the solution and ne

  • Typo (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:33AM (#9660744)
    The headline misspelled "embraced and extended"

    Sincerely,
    WH Gates

  • MSN's new search will be HUGE... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jerkface ( 177812 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:34AM (#9660750) Journal
    and this Altavista thing probably has nothing to do with it. As others have pointed out, Altavista doesn't have anything to offer anyway.

    A certain site I help run has shown what many other people are seeing: MSN's search robot is absolutely going crazy lately. It purposely retrieves files of all kinds - it's done about 4.5GB of traffic on my site because it's downloading large videos! What's a search engine going to do with all these videos?

    Besides that, it visits the forums as often as many of the regulars do. It's FAR more aggressive than googlebot.

    It's rather obvious that MSN's new search engine is going to be both more complete and more up-to-date than anything else that's out there. I love google right now, but I wonder how they're going to stand up to MS.

    • Oh great! So you are gonna use up all your allotted bandwidth because of Micro$ofts search engine? Yeah that's what I really want!
    • There's a lot more to getting accurate, relevant search results than gathering cache. The question is, how will MS stand up to Google, not the other way around.

    • A certain site I help run has shown what many other people are seeing: MSN's search robot is absolutely going crazy lately. It purposely retrieves files of all kinds - it's done about 4.5GB of traffic on my site because it's downloading large videos! What's a search engine going to do with all these videos?

      If it bothers you so, why don't you use /robots.txt [robotstxt.org] to keep it out? (and if the MSN robot ignores this, there's a story for /. in itself)

    • I didnt notice it taking alot of bandwidth from my site, probably because we dont have alot of videos for it to download.


      I did notice the forum activity though. It comes in just as often as the regulars. It wasnt a problem til it got involved in an anti-MS flame-war though. Jeez- talk about malware- some of the things it said were just plain mean.

    • Re:MSN's new search will be HUGE... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Alan Hicks ( 660661 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @10:00AM (#9660892) Homepage
      It's rather obvious that MSN's new search engine is going to be both more complete and more up-to-date than anything else that's out there. I love google right now, but I wonder how they're going to stand up to MS.

      Repeat after me. A spider is not a search engine. A search engine is not a spider.

      You seem to be all up in alarm because Microsoft might come out and beat up google. I wouldn't worry about it myself. To begin with, all those videos are going to be mostly useless unless they do a "video search" similar to google's "image search". What good that would be I don't know. You seem to have forgotten that even though MS may have more content to search than google, they still have to sift through all that stuff. They still have to grep it, grok it, cull it, and then format the results in a high-availability high-performance cluster of database servers in order to compete with google. Even for MS that's a herculean task.

      • Also, the reason Google's search tech is so good is because they employ an absolutely insane number of talented PhDs. These people have done loads of research on graph theory, information theory, and other related fields and how they link back to searching, and all that has been incorporated into Google's engine.

        MS isn't going to squish them unless they've managed to match them brain-wise, and from what I've heard, that just isn't happening. Add to this the fact that Google started small DB-wise and grew

    • isn't it obvious that the reason they need to crawl the web MORE aggressive than googlebot is because msn doesn't have as much of the web as googlebot have?

      i think it will slow done once it's reached X number of pages
    • All the mined data in the world won't make damn bit of difference if it can't retrieve it accurately and timely.
    • What's a search engine going to do with all these videos?

      How about something crazy, like, say, searching videos? [altavista.com]

    • The FAQ [msn.com] for the MSNBot. Of particluar interest:

      How do I prevent MSNBot from crawling some or all of my website?
      The robots.txt file is used to prevent web crawlers from accessing a web site. The format of the robots.txt file is specified in The Robot Exclusion Standard [robotstxt.org]. MSNBot analyzes all instances where the User-Agent is specified as either "msnbot" or "*". Based on this, MSNBot crawls only the web pages that allow it to do so.

  • some more info (Score:4, Informative)

    by dncsky1530 ( 711564 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:36AM (#9660760) Homepage
    Reuters [chron.com]
    katu [katu.com]

  • Similarity (Score:3, Insightful)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:40AM (#9660791)
    Orkut code was claimed to be stolen recently [slashdot.org].

    Its completely the employees fault. I am no big Microsoft supporter but nothing they can do about this if the guy chose to do it by himself.

    • Re:Similarity (Score:3, Interesting)

      by thebatlab ( 468898 )
      No, it's not just the employees fault. I'm sure Microsoft knew full well what he worked on before and what he might do with that knowledge. And as far as what he did, he did not "hack" into the servers. He used an old account to get in. The company has to be accountable too. Just like google [slashdot.org]

  • Will AV pull a Darl McBride? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eudial ( 590661 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:46AM (#9660823)
    The question is: Will AV pull a Darl McBride, and claim that MSN search was based on AV, and should cease and desist immediately, and start suing everyone who uses MSN search for IP infringements?

    Naturally they will in that case refuse to show the sources of AV, making it impossible for Microsoft to prove the opposite.

  • Source code "theft" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EMN13 ( 11493 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:46AM (#9660825) Homepage

    I don't believe that source code theft is really such a problems for such companies - I really really doubt microsoft would use much of altavista's code even if they legally could! (It's so unbelievably much work to figure out someone elses mature code....)

    However, employee education leakage is far more important. The raison d'etre for some of those architectural choices, or experiences with certain emergent pattern in large scale systems, and similarly complex issues are very, very valuable.

    So really - feel sorry for microsoft... this just gives them bad PR, potentially opens them up for lawsuits (however unfounded), and generally doesn't do them any good..

    I wonder where the claim of 5000 dollars damage comes from? The article says he claims he was curious about the progression of the product (which honestly, however illegal, I sympathize with - you put so much of yourself in these systems and then all of a sudden you're not allowed to know anything about them... arg!), so maybe it's all just much ado about nothing [mit.edu].

  • Altavista source code (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:47AM (#9660832)
    #!/bin/sh
    # (c)1988 Altavi^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoftCorp 2004
    sleep 5
    find /cache_last_updated_1994 -exec grep -i -l "$*" {} \;
  • If microsoft really stole code, you'd think they'd steal the really good stuff. Past experience with microsoft products would indicate otherwise.

  • what really happened (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:57AM (#9660875)
    Pardon my anonymity, but I did used to work with the guy. The speculation in the comments here is pretty disguisting, as is the implication that he would give/use said source code to Microsoft.

    To be sure, he's a smart guy, and doesn't need to. He might have screwed up by doing what he did, but being code-smart doesn't make you common sense-smart.

    The 'hack' was to demonstrate the insecurity of certain machines at AltaVista. The lost data was recovered in a couple days. He'd pointed out the insecurity of these machines a number of times and nothing was done about it until after he accessed the machine.

    The alleged stolen source code was a backup of the tree on a FireWire drive he created when the source repo was being moved.

    While I'm not condoning what he did, he shouldn't be crucified for it. The punishment in the US regarding [cr|h]acking does not fit the crime. In this case, the "victim" is a huge corporation (Yahoo) who was damaged far below the necssary $100k necessary for FBI involvement and stands little to benefit from this predatory proscecution of its former employee other than the PR stunt that is connecting him to Microsoft and the new MSN search.

    I'm gonna be fucking sick.

    • Re:what really happened (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If the company in question here (MS) didn't have a track record of stealing ideas and, in some cases, code outright, then perhaps your comments might seem pretty level headed. As it is, you need to consider all this in context. MS steals ideas, intellectual property and code. We all know it. It's been proven in court more than once. Ask Sun or Apple about that. They've been sued successfully before on this issue many times and accused of it many more. The pattern exists whether it "digusts" you or not.

      I'm

    • far below the necssary $100k necessary for FBI involvement

      Actually, the trigger is only $5,000. I agree with what you said, though.

    • Re:what really happened (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tim Browse ( 9263 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @03:42PM (#9662637)
      The 'hack' was to demonstrate the insecurity of certain machines at AltaVista. The lost data was recovered in a couple days. He'd pointed out the insecurity of these machines a number of times and nothing was done about it until after he accessed the machine.

      You're right that he's not got much common sense...

      Federal authorities allege that Laurent Chavet, a former AltaVista employee, illegally accessed the California company's computer system in March 2002 and June 2002, after he left AltaVista

      Feel free to bitch about your employer's poor security. If you're a permanent employee, and confident of your position, hack in to show it can be done and report your findings to the powers that be. (I'd still recommend telling your boss you're going to try, though.)

      But for the love of God, don't leave a company, then hack in to their systems just to show them that it can be done. You've left - your responsibility to their security has ended, and if you do it then, people will merely suspect your motives.

      I wouldn't dream of hacking into an ex-employer's systems, no matter how benign or helpful I thought I was being, unless I had their express permission to try.

      Maybe it's just me. And anyone else with some common sense.

  • What do Alta Vista do? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Harry8 ( 664596 )
    I've heard much whining from lawyers (often repeated by journalists) about the process of open source projects accepting code without doing exhaustive searches to ensure that said code does not belong to someone else.
    This despite the fact that opensource codee can be seen by all, including those who own the copyrights, and project leaders can be notified, "These lines of code in these files are ours. Remove them please."

    Alta Vista may have had their code stolen by a Microsoft Project.

    How can Alta Vista
    • having worked in both proprietary and open source cultures... I think the traing in IP issues is actually better in the well-seasoned open source teams than in many corporate teams. In open source projects, greenhorns don't get to comit changes -- changes always get vetted first. Offenders are whacked with a cluestick. In many corporate cultures, greenhorns are turned loose, and well..., they are guided by their own compass without anyone having checked the calibration of said compass.

  • Do unto others... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by segfault_0 ( 181690 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @09:58AM (#9660882)
    Now if Linux really had some code in it that was unknowingly copied in by someone, is this how you would want it and its creators treated, because of the acts of one morally deprived individual?? No, most would say it wasnt their fault.

    Id have to side with Microsoft on this one, They obviously knew he had Altavista knowldege but i wouldnt hold their feet to the fire because i dont think they knew the extent of what this mans "experience" was.

    Microsoft is in a real tough spot with keeping their secrets secret while ensuring that Altavista is treated fairly. People who steal software source code suck.
  • I am sure this guy didn't list 'hacked altavista' on his
    resume, or wait, maybe he did.....

    Its ok though, if he was really top notch it would have been google.

  • Be Honest (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tylersoze ( 789256 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @10:15AM (#9660941)
    Now be honest, how many software developers here have copies of source code from every company they've ever worked for? I sure do. I've never used any non-trivial portion of it (especially since each software job I've had has been in a radically different field) nor would I, mainly because I'd probably want to completely rewrite it anyway :), but I just hate the idea of "losing" something I worked so hard on, even if it justs sits on some dusty CD somewhere and isn't really "mine". They're essentially digital "trophies" I suppose. :)

    On the other hand, if I someday go to work for a direct competitor of a company I used to work for, I'd sure as hell make sure I had deleted most of the code I had from the previous company. I definitely wouldn't keep the entire project tree at the very least.
    • Now be honest, how many software developers here have copies of source code from every company they've ever worked for?

      And how many software developers here have hacked into their previous employer's system to get a copy of that source code?

      Archiving source code from previous jobs is one thing, breaking in to grab it after being fired is, well, clearly illegal.

  • NDA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by internic ( 453511 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @10:16AM (#9660953)

    I don't work in software, so let me throw out this question. Don't they make you sign an NDA when you work on something like a big search company's search technology? I know they do this in some other tech businesses, making it really hard for you to work for a competitor on the same sort of product without violating your agreement. The reason I ask is that I'm curious how they could hire him for MSN search in the first place.

    As far as the stolen code goes, since it happened before he was hired by MS, you can't really blame them. I was also thinking, if he worked on it himself anyway, couldn't he probably replicate most of the functionality even without the actual code in front of him? Then again, the article says, "Chavet told investigators that he worked on the AltaVista source code while at the company and logged into the AltaVista system after leaving because he 'was curious about the evolution of the source code after his departure.'" so maybe he was just trying to steal the most up to date ideas possible. :-)

  • Shame on AltaVista Admins & HR Department (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HighOrbit ( 631451 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @10:21AM (#9660973)
    he worked on the AltaVista source code while at the company and logged into the AltaVista system after leaving
    I doubt he "hacked" or cracked his way in. It sounds like the logged on with his old account, in which case *shame shame shame* on the lazy AltaVista admins for not deleting old accounts of ex-employees.

    Shame on the AltaVista legal and personnel departments for not making their employees sign non-compete clauses to prevent employees from working on the exact same type of technology for competitors.

  • that's easy (Score:4, Funny)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @10:28AM (#9661001) Homepage

    How much code was being written into MSN Search?

    Obviously not enough...

  • Searching "Laurent Chavet" on google, I found some of his posts to the Linux-Kernel mailing list.
    http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0104 .2/0589.html [iu.edu]

    His e-mail address is @av.com, that is altavista, so it must be him.
  • I am now thinking back to all those times SCO, and persons trying to bank on SCO's nonsense, alleged that open source software is unsafe because "anyone could have contributed" so "you have no way of knowing if any of the contributions contain stolen intellectual property".

    And laughing.

    And laughing.
  • The only true question is that... is this guy still an employee of Microsoft? If so, then we all know something is up. Hah.

  • Oh good.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Deal-a-Neil ( 166508 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @12:00PM (#9661455) Homepage Journal
    ..that means the meta-keyword 7X trick should get me to the top of the search results on MSN Search as it did back in the late 90s. Anyone want to bid on the first 10 positions of any English search term? I'm your daddy.

  • On his resume? (Score:3, Funny)

    by geekee ( 591277 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @07:00PM (#9663468)
    "However, the illegal break-in happened before he was hired by Microsoft. The question is, did Microsoft know anything about it? "

    Yeah, I'm sure that was a bullet item on his resume.

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