Hackers Often Accidentally Send Code to Microsoft

A Microsoft Security official has revealed that hackers often send their code to Redmond by accident.

Anyone who's ever had a computer crash on them will be familiar with the pop-up that asks you to send details of the problem to Microsoft. You don't have to fill in any boxes, or explain the problem yourself – it's just a case of clicking 'send' or 'don't send'. However, did you know that hackers developing code like to send the details of their crashes to Microsoft, too?

At last weeks' TechEd conference in Australia, one of Microsoft's senior security architects revealed that hackers who crash their systems sometimes don't hesitate to click the 'send' button when faced with the error report pop-up. The result is that they often end up sending Microsoft details of whatever malicious code they happened to have been working on before their computer crashed.

"People have sent us their virus code when they're trying to develop their virus and they keep crashing their systems," Rocky Heckman said. "It's amazing how much stuff we get."

Heckman also revealed just how much hackers target Microsoft.

"The first thing [script kiddies] do is fire off all these attacks at Microsoft.com," ZDNet quotes him as saying during the conference. "On average we get attacked between 7000 and 9000 times per second at Microsoft.com," said the senior security architect.

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