Ex-Microsoft employee involved in Windows 8 leaks sentenced to three months in prison

Himanshu Arora

Posts: 902   +7

Alex Kibkalo, the former Microsoft employee who stole trade secrets and leaked Windows 8 builds to a French blogger, was on Tuesday sentenced to three months in jail. He will also have to pay a $100 fine.

Although Kibkalo faced a maximum of 10 years in prison, he ultimately reached a deal with federal prosecutors for the reduced sentence.

"For sure, I got my lesson not to discuss my work projects with external parties", Kibkalo said in a letter included in court documents. The Russian national has been in custody ever since he was arrested in Seattle back in March, so he has almost completed his prison term.

While trade leaks happen every other day, Kibkalo's case picked up wide notice primarily because of the way Microsoft investigated it. The software giant went a bit too far when it secretly looked through the blogger's Hotmail account and messenger logs to nail down the culprit leaking pre-release information about Windows 8 RT and the company's Activation Server Software Development Kit.

Given the fact that Microsoft accessed data kept on its own servers, the company was well within its legal rights to do so. But that didn't stop privacy advocates from slamming the company, especially because it had condemned Google for the same reasons in the past.

As a result, Microsoft revised its privacy policy and promised that it would no longer search user content even when its own intellectual property is threatened.

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Hotmail is a free service provided by Microsoft, I honestly don't see what they did as "too far". I hope I'm not the only one.
Microsoft has a right to defend it's IP but what's concerning is the way they did it. how many accounts did they have to scratch through to find the culprit and what other saucy secrets did they stumble upon whilst doing this? There's nothing secretive, touchy or sensitive in my inboxes but I certainly wouldn't want anybody just digging through it.
 
If you are using Microsoft's or Google's services, fully expect your information to be available to scrutiny. It is a free service, and fully owned and operated by the respective companies. Therefore, they can do whatever they want with their own property.

There are no such things as "privacy" or the "expectation of privacy" on the internet. If you're doing shady things on your account, go into it with the understanding that it takes three keystrokes for a sysadmin to pull up -all- of your data.

It appears that certain people's ignorance is being commonly mistaken with corporate property rights. I may be incorrect, but that's my personal take.
 
Microsoft has a right to defend it's IP but what's concerning is the way they did it. how many accounts did they have to scratch through to find the culprit and what other saucy secrets did they stumble upon whilst doing this? There's nothing secretive, touchy or sensitive in my inboxes but I certainly wouldn't want anybody just digging through it.

It would have been easy, see who's he's been emailing, and go through there mailboxes on Hotmail, so they would have looked at basically everyone in his contact list. Not a lot of people to be honest :/
 
Microsoft has a right to defend it's IP but what's concerning is the way they did it. how many accounts did they have to scratch through to find the culprit and what other saucy secrets did they stumble upon whilst doing this? There's nothing secretive, touchy or sensitive in my inboxes but I certainly wouldn't want anybody just digging through it.

It would have been easy, see who's he's been emailing, and go through there mailboxes on Hotmail, so they would have looked at basically everyone in his contact list. Not a lot of people to be honest :/

Additionally, there are the algos they can deploy to rapidly search for the offending material. Given that fact alone, I'm somewhat surprised he'd be naive enough to think leaking sensitive information over a company-owned service wouldn't get flagged almost immediately upon investigation.
 
It would have been easy, see who's he's been emailing, and go through there mailboxes on Hotmail, so they would have looked at basically everyone in his contact list. Not a lot of people to be honest :/
No you don't understand. How did they know he was the culprit? They must've checked tons of emails of all their employees before stumbling onto him. If they suspected him right off the bat then it would've been easy.
 
No you don't understand. How did they know he was the culprit? They must've checked tons of emails of all their employees before stumbling onto him. If they suspected him right off the bat then it would've been easy.

I work for an IT company, I 100% understand they have the right to read through my company emails and my company own equipment, same in this case, Microsoft has the right to do the same thing, I don't understand the outrage? Sure, Microsoft is a big company, so maybe they did go searching through lots of peoples accounts, so what? they have the right to do so, this guys the ***** who used Hotmail to send sensitive data!
 
I work for an IT company, I 100% understand they have the right to read through my company emails and my company own equipment, same in this case, Microsoft has the right to do the same thing, I don't understand the outrage? Sure, Microsoft is a big company, so maybe they did go searching through lots of peoples accounts, so what? they have the right to do so, this guys the ***** who used Hotmail to send sensitive data!
I understand they have the right to scratch through your email if they suspect you but do they have the right to go check out everybody's? Not according to what I've read that's why MS have amended their terms and conditions. And who's to say they only went through their employees...
But I digress and agree he was a chump to use Hotmail, he should've pulled a Snowden on the crowd and used a secure encrypted email service provider.
 
If you are using Microsoft's or Google's services, fully expect your information to be available to scrutiny. It is a free service, and fully owned and operated by the respective companies. Therefore, they can do whatever they want with their own property.

There are no such things as "privacy" or the "expectation of privacy" on the internet. If you're doing shady things on your account, go into it with the understanding that it takes three keystrokes for a sysadmin to pull up -all- of your data.

It appears that certain people's ignorance is being commonly mistaken with corporate property rights. I may be incorrect, but that's my personal take.

Yes u are right, u are INcorrect.
 
Yep that is what you get for speeding.ahahahah. 100 dollars. So he won't be able to buy strippers drinks for a couple of days. hahaha. Now that is such a severe punishments. Also about rights. Are we all communist here? Since when does free give rights away?Same could be said about Microsoft. If he leaked the software on the free internet. Windows 8 should be free now for all. This is the kind of I D I O T reasoning that erodes our rights everywhere.
 
So you are told that hotmail is free. Ha? Say wa? Last time I checked windows is the most expensive software on the planet. So when is anything free that comes with windows. Them saying that anything is free is just screwing with your head. Only free if you pirate windows. I hear discussions that anything microsoft does is built into the price of windows. Even them giving away software in poor countries so it can be used to scam people (cough Nigeria cough) Also email is the wrong name. It should be called e-postcard not email. It is not encrypted there fore it is not in an envelope.
 
So you are told that hotmail is free. Ha? Say wa? Last time I checked windows is the most expensive software on the planet. So when is anything free that comes with windows. Them saying that anything is free is just screwing with your head. Only free if you pirate windows. I hear discussions that anything microsoft does is built into the price of windows. Even them giving away software in poor countries so it can be used to scam people (cough Nigeria cough) Also email is the wrong name. It should be called e-postcard not email. It is not encrypted there fore it is not in an envelope.

Then why can I sign up and use Hotmail on my Linux OS without paying a penny?
I even login to my hotmail account on an Apple Mac! Crazy?! Doesn't cost me a penny either...

Also Hotmail has been using full session HTTPS SSL encryption since 2010...
 
So you are told that hotmail is free. Ha? Say wa? Last time I checked windows is the most expensive software on the planet. So when is anything free that comes with windows. Them saying that anything is free is just screwing with your head. Only free if you pirate windows. I hear discussions that anything microsoft does is built into the price of windows. Even them giving away software in poor countries so it can be used to scam people (cough Nigeria cough) Also email is the wrong name. It should be called e-postcard not email. It is not encrypted there fore it is not in an envelope.

Then why can I sign up and use Hotmail on my Linux OS without paying a penny?
I even login to my hotmail account on an Apple Mac! Crazy?! Doesn't cost me a penny either...

Also Hotmail has been using full session HTTPS SSL encryption since 2010...

I would like to know your definition of "free". It is a kind of right that exists not in your continual present, but in the swastika(the eastern version) kind of way, in the ideological zone. So you may not use it in every given moment, but you do have it. It is up to your realisation what other "service providers" will do to your Life
 
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