14 DAY TRIAL // Alex Kibkalo, a former Microsoft employee who spent 7 years at the Redmond-based company, was recently convicted to three months in prison after leaking confidential information, including full Windows 8 builds that were then published online by a French blogger.
While Microsoft has managed to track Kibkalo down and send him to prison, it turns out that the company wasn't so interested in stopping the Windows 8 leaks, but more in punishing the one who actually shared the Activation Server SDK with the rest of the world.
Needless to say, such an SDK could help cybercriminals crack Windows much faster and easier, so in this case Microsoft was more or less trying to fight piracy and make sure that less illegal copies of its operating system are reaching the web.
Just like Bavo Luysterborg wrote on his blog, Kibkalo's lawyer explained during one of the trials that leaking Windows 8 code wasn't necessarily an illegal activity, but admitted that publishing the SDK of an application that could then be used to generate fake activation keys was.
“…leaking Microsoft code to a technology blogger with whom he regularly (and legitimately) chatted about tech developments and other industry issues. This time the defendant went too far, giving up proprietary Microsoft software without permission and cavalierly suggesting that it could be reverse engineered to produce fake activation keys,” the court documents show.
The outcome of this lawsuit is as clear as day: the number of Windows leaks that reached the web after Kibkalo's arrest clearly dropped to none and the most renowned leakers out there either removed their accounts from social networks or suddenly became a lot less active.
The aforementioned source adds that Microsoft was really interested in the SDK and the “Windows builds only make up for a couple of lines in the court documents, while the SDK is described in great detail over the course of several pages.” At the same time, the source says, the memo published by the prosecutor “doesn't include any mention of the Windows builds at all, nor does the final judgment.”
Microsoft hasn't commented on this lawsuit so far, but it seems like the company has clearly achieved its goal. Not only that Windows leakers have more or less disappeared, but it seems that Kibkalo has admitted its mistake and expressed his regrets in a letter sent to the court.
“As of now, I deeply regret, that I have shared that information. Having done that I have lost a job, one can only dream about. Moreover, when I have found another interesting job a year after, the echo of my mistakes took that from me too. For sure I was given good lessons, which I deserved,” he said.