[daniel-levin]

Microsoft shares source code with lots of partners. It would be asinine to admit that source code leaks, accidental or otherwise, would compromise their security. If they did that, it would create headaches for their massive contracts where source sharing is a prerequisite. So they toe the party line and say no, in fact, source code leaks do not compromise security.

[macjohnmcc]

Many years ago when I worked at Microsoft I asked for the source code to Solitaire. A few days later I received a stack of CD-ROMs with the entire source code of Windows NT (4.0 maybe).

[herodoturtle]

And what of the source code to Solitaire!?

Cool memory, thanks for sharing.

[macjohnmcc]

I just thought of something. At the time blank CD-R's were about $15 each and the fastest burners at the time were 2x burners. I'm sorry I wasted so much of time the person who burned these and the cost of the media!

[macjohnmcc]

It took ages to figure out where the code even was in the many files and folders. The directory structure did not make it obvious.

[westmeal]

Can't wait until cozy bear leaks that :D

[sn_master]

NT 4 code was already leaked almost full back in 2004. You can still find it with relative ease if you know where to look, or search for certain keywords in the code.

[keyle]

Man I'm old, but give me NT 4 with modern technology support, modern drivers and GPU driven and I would move in a heartbeat.

[macjohnmcc]

Yeah I remember when there weren't dozens of services running in the background just for basic OS functionality.

[sn_master]

What do you miss the most? The UI? Speed?

[macjohnmcc]

Make that winning animation use the GPU!

[sedatk]

That was before Source Depot, I presume.

[macjohnmcc]

They were using SLM (Slime) but I did not have access to the server since I was on a different project (Microsoft Systems Management Server).

[rbanffy]

> a stack of CD-ROMs with the entire source code of Windows NT

That's a lot of code. Scary.

[mandeepj]

>That's a lot of code.

It's estimated to be around 40 million lines of code

[macjohnmcc]

And it was not compressed it was just a bunch of files and folders. My guess is it was around 15 CD-ROMs

[rbanffy]

40 million lines of 80 characters would fit in 5 CDs. With a more reasonable average length, it'd fit comfortably in 3.

And 40 million lines for an OS is a crazy amount of code.

[srtjstjsj]

The source code is already out there, so any compromises have already been found and exploited. Leaking it further won't create more vulnerabilities, and more likely will cause existing vulnerabilities to be found by white hats

[TedDoesntTalk]

> Microsoft shares source code with lots of partners

ALL source code for ALL active AND inactive projects? I highly doubt it.

You simply have no idea if the attackers had access to unshared, proprietary code or not. Like Azure server-side components.