microsoft's $250,00 bounty for Conficker creator

MICROSOFT has organised a gloabal response to the CONFICKER(Dowadup) worm to diasble domains by Conficker. For the fifth time, microsoft announced a $250,000 bounty to find the source of the worm- a stratergy that's worked four times already and most recently led to the conviction of the author of the Sasser worm back in 2005.

Called a “reward program”, Microsoft said that the bounty is based on the firm’s “recognition” that launching the code into the wild was a “criminal attack”.Similar initiatives were announced in November 2003 to find the authors of the Blaster and Sobig worms, in January 2004 to find the author of MyDoom.B and the source of the Sasser worm in May 2004.

“The best way to defeat potential botnets like Conficker/Downadup is by the security and Domain Name System communities working together,” said Greg Rattray, chief Internet security advisor at ICANN. “ICANN represents a community that’s all about coordinating those kinds of efforts to keep the Internet globally secure and stable.”Along with Microsoft, organizations involved in this collaborative effort include ICANN, NeuStar, VeriSign, CNNIC, Afilias, Public Internet Registry, Global Domains International Inc., M1D Global, AOL, Symantec, F-Secure, ISC, researchers from Georgia Tech, the Shadowserver Foundation, Arbor Networks and Support Intelligence

Microsoft receives 10,000th patent

Microsoft today announced that they have received their 10,000th patent, number 7,479,950 entitled "manipulation association of data with a physical object " which sounds ironic enough.!

While the patent's abstract reads:
"Data elements stored in a computing system and associated with a physical object are re associated with the same or another physical object. An identifying characteristic presented by the physical object, such as a reflective pattern applied to the object, is detected when the object is positioned adjacent to the interactive display surface. Images or other files associated with the identifying characteristic are accessed and displayed on the interactive display surface. A gesture by a user adjacent to the interactive display surface is detected to re associate a selected representation. For example, the user can change where the selected element fits in a sequence of data elements, or reassociate the selected element with a second object placed on the interactive display surface. In a networked environment, the re associated element can be stored on a server and subsequently accessed from a different interactive surface via the network using the second physical object."

For the second year in a row, in 2008 the IEEE ranked Microsoft's patent portfolio at the top of the list in terms of "its power and influence," and not just among software companies. In 2003, Microsoft made a public commitment to broaden its IP licensing efforts, shifting "from a defensive posture to a proactive, collaborative one."