Continued Hacking Impacts Microsoft

Microsoft has acknowledged that an unauthorized person accessed the Microsoft corporate network, and that the intruder may have “viewed” source code for an unnamed product. Additionally, another person was able to modify content on a Microsoft Web site that the company neglected to update with its own recent security patches. Microsoft’s account of the first, and more serious, hack changed several times, and it downplayed the impact of both attacks. Nevertheless, the incidents and Microsoft’s responses have hurt both Microsoft’s reputation and productivity.

The attacks highlight the need for customers to ensure that they have applied the appropriate patches to their systems and to rethink policies involving network access from PCs that they don’t own or manage.

The Two Security Breaches

In one recent attack, an intruder accessed a Microsoft employee’s home computer that did not have updated virus protection software. When the employee used the unprotected home computer to access the Microsoft corporate network, the virus was able to collect passwords for Microsoft’s internal network.