Microsoft goes into the bounty business

BBC Online story: “A $5m reward fund has been set up by Microsoft to help track down people who unleash damaging computer viruses.

The first rewards on offer will give payments of $250,000 to anyone with information about the creators of the MSBlast or Sobig viruses.

Both these viruses struck earlier this year and wrought havoc on home and business internet users.”

Er, shouldn’t that read “home and business internet users running Microsoft software”? Still, from Microsoft’s point of view, $5 million is a lot less than it would cost the company to write more secure software.