Microsoft: We Were Watching Hackers

S E A T T L E, Oct. 30 -- Microsoft Corp. says a hacker had high-levelaccess to its computer system for 12 days — not up to five weeks,as the company had first reported — and that the company monitoredthe illegal activity the entire time.

While the company says it believes no major corporate secretswere stolen, some security experts believe the 12-day period wasplenty of time for a hacker to do damage that may not have beendetected yet.

Microsoft spokesman Rick Miller said Sunday that beginning Oct.14, a hacker gained access to high-level secrets and at some pointover the next 12 days viewed blueprints, or source code, forMicrosoft software that is being developed.

When it confirmed the incident Friday, the software giant said an electronic intruder had access to sourcecode for as long as five weeks. Microsoft used that time estimatebecause the duration of the hacker’s presence was unclear and thecompany wanted to be sure it did not underestimate the problem,Miller said.

Company Waited Two Weeks

The company was alerted to the break-in by the creation of newaccounts giving users access to parts of Microsoft’s computernetwork, Miller said.

“We start seeing these new accounts being created, but thatcould be an anomaly of the system,” Miller said. “After a day ortwo, we realized it was someone hacking into the system.”

Not until Oct. 26 did the company notify the FBI, which isinvestigating. Microsoft said it initially planned to handle thebreak-in on its own.

“We realized the intrusion had grown to the level thatwarranted bringing in the FBI,” Miller said. Miller said theactivity did not corrupt or modify the code for the product.

If any attempts to download or transfer the source code weremade, such activity was not recorded in Microsoft’s logs, Millersaid, adding that it is extremely unlikely any source code fileswere copied because of their immense size.

Experts Skeptical of Microsoft Claims