Microsoft offers cash rewards in virus battle

Microsoft is applying Wild West bounties to modern Internet crimes, and has set aside $ 5m (€4.3m) to pay large cash rewards to people who help authorities capture and prosecute the creators of damaging computer viruses.

Flanked by US and international law enforcers, Microsoft executives promised to pay the first rewards of $250,000 (€218,000) each to anyone who helps authorities find and convict the authors of the original Blaster and Sobig Internet infections unleashed this year.

The world’s largest and wealthiest software company also pledged to continue making its popular Windows operating system software, the most common target of hackers, more resistant to such threats.

“We do believe this will make a difference,” said Microsoft’s general counsel, Brad Smith. “We can’t afford to have these criminals hide behind their computer screens.”

The Blaster and Sobig programs spread rapidly among hundreds of thousands of computers running Windows, exposing weaknesses in the Microsoft software the company had billed as its most secure yet.

Earlier this year, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer described such virus attacks as “very serious crimes that could affect defence and hospital systems as well as the businesses that drive all of the world’s economy”.

Microsoft urged anyone with information about the two computer infections to contact local offices of the FBI, Secret Service or Interpol, or send tips using the Web sites for Interpol – www.interpol.int – or the FBI’s Internet Fraud and Complaint Centre, www.ifccfbi.gov.

“It’s like going back to the Wild West,” said Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure, an antivirus company in Finland.