HACKERS PENETRATE MICROSOFT SITE
Well, sort of. Not really, said Microsoft.
"No part of the Web presence of Microsoft was compromised," said spokesman Adam Sohn. "There's no new vulnerability here."
Then how to explain the message, "flipz was here and f0bic, your seksi voice helped me through the night heh. Save the world. Kill Bill," that appeared on a Microsoft's "Conference Management Server" Web site?
The answer, according to Microsoft, is that the site was indeed cracked. But it belonged to a lone Microsoft engineer's "test box," a standalone Web server the engineer used to test code. The server was not connected to either Microsoft.com or MSN.com or the Microsoft Intranet.
There are many such standalone servers, said Sohn, all of them outside the corporate Web ring.
"Obviously, this one was not properly patched," said Sohn. "The guy who put up the site, while he obviously knows a lot about information technology, probably wasn't paying too much attention" to security. Nothing was compromised, said Sohn.
So, properly speaking, fortress Microsoft.com remains unbreached -- at least by Web site spoofers. It's not for lack of trying, said a weary-sounding Sohn.
"People are banging on us constantly, all day, everyday from everywhere around the world."
ŠAnkur Jain 1999