Ex-Microsoft employee jailed for stealing business secrets

A US court has sentenced a former Microsoft employee to three months in prison. The Russian would have given unreleased Microsoft software to an unknown French blogger, who then put screenshots online and sold keys.

The software architect, Alex Kibkalo, was arrested in March this year and will remain in custody until June 19, minus pre-trial detention. He had previously confessed to passing trade secrets to a Frenchman when he was working for Microsoft in Lebanon.

Kibkalo was able to get hold of pre-release code for Windows 8 RT despite strict non-disclosure rules at Microsoft. He also uploaded the Microsoft Activation Server Software Development Kit to a computer in Redmond and to his own OneDrive cloud storage. The still unknown French blogger put screenshots online based on this leaked software and sold activation keys for Windows Server on eBay. In addition, disclosure of the Microsoft Activation Server SDK would allow the copy protection to be reverse engineered.

The Russian would owe the relatively low prison sentence to a full admission of guilt. The man is said to have leaked Microsoft’s business secrets in 2012, after he resigned after he had come into conflict with his executives. He became a suspect after bragging on an internet forum about providing the blogger with the data. Kibkalo is said to have worked at Microsoft for seven years.