Windows 8 Milestone 1 Leak Got Two Microsoft Employees Fired, Allegedly

Tweet

A few weeks ago, the Milestone 1 beta build of Windows 8 was leaked to the torrent networks and the newsgroups. Some suggested that the leak had occurred at an Asian PC manufacturer, who had received it early and some dubious employee leaked it. However, the real leak could have been closer to home as it’s being reported that two Microsoft employees were fired in connection to the leak.

One of the two employees being fired was said to be an employee of Microsoft at their Redmond, Washington HQ, while another was said to work at a Microsoft office in Russia. Windows insider journalist extraordinaire Tom Warren of WinRumors.com was unable to independently verify these terminations and Microsoft doesn’t publicly comment on employee terminations.

It’s being reported the internal builds of Windows 8 will unlock different features and system DLLs based on which activation key is used to authenticate the OS. This “Red Pill” licensing check is how Microsoft was presumably able to track down and locate who leaked these versions of Windows 8 to the public.

Warren suggests that the real prized goose that everybody wants a glimpse of – the new Tablet UI for Windows 8 – is possibly the most secret part of Windows 8, and that Microsoft is keeping it under heavy wraps.

Heavy corporation punishment (like termination) for leaks is nothing new, especially in this WikiLeaks era of everything leaking to the web. It was reported awhile back that Google fires one to two people on average every year for leaking classified material. Even the Google employee who leaked the news that every Google employee would get a raise and bonus at the end of 2010 was fired, even though that was hardly a state secret. But, examples must be made, we guess.

Check the source link to see Tom Warren’s piece on this.