The Change Mariner

Mainsoft Link to Microsoft Source Code Leak

San Jose Mercury News:

A small San Jose-based software company Friday emerged as a focus of the investigation into how parts of the secretive, underlying software code for Microsoft Windows were leaked and circulated on the Internet.

The theft of Microsoft's closely guarded source code -- which provide blueprints that make the ubiquitous Windows operating system work -- raised computer security concerns to a new unsettling level, security experts said.

References to Mainsoft, a software company that has worked closely with Microsoft since 1994, appeared within the leaked code and an e-mail address for a Mainsoft employee is listed in an accompanying file, according to security experts who have seen the stolen code.

But those experts stressed that it was unclear what role Mainsoft may have played or who might have stolen and distributed parts of the code for Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0. The code has been posted on peer-to-peer file sharing sites used by the tech savvy.

Mainsoft, which has a source code licensing agreement with Microsoft, Friday acknowledged its connection to the incident. ``Mainsoft takes Microsoft's and all our customers' security matters seriously, and we recognize the gravity of the situation,'' Mainsoft Chairman Mike Gullard said in a statement.