It's also quite the blame gymnastics. The code that enables the bad actors was written, published, and distributed at massive scale by Microsoft. The "crime" they are accusing the researcher of is telling the world about it.
It would be an interesting case if the defendant had good representation.
The interesting case seen to be that the researcher apparently got laid off recently by this MS team, and thus has a 6 month NDA. Apparently he still tried to get bug bounties from inside knowledge of these criminal backdoors. That's what is being talked about behind.
A true popcorn case if this would go to court. Would cause lot of governments to think about their backend choices.
I’d love to see Microsoft try it on. The defence witnesses in any such trial are going to show up holding all kinds of receipts that Microsoft would prefer didn’t see the light of day.
Straight to jail for you, citizen. Distribution of 0day for lulz has been criminal since 2022. You're free to try and get away with it under any and all amendments. IANAL!
Responsible disclosure is a normalized process in the courts. Skipping it opens you to, at very minimum, a plethora of civil lawsuits, including any and all the damages that resulted from skipping it. The odds are very much not great that you'll be OK.
Responsible disclosure is an industry norm, but I don't really see how an independent researcher has a legal obligation to play by industry norms. If I discover that any product has a defect, I am free to blab about it all I want as long as it is truthful. There may be considerations beyond this if you are disclosing something discovered by breaking terms of service or by fucking with a computer that isn't yours, but discovering that your copy of windows on your machine has a flaw and telling people about it is protected.
The dispute is whether or not it is perfectly legal free speech. By simply publishing it on GitHub, it was a violation of a TOS and that right there opens it up to lawsuits from MS. You are free to go down this path and prove me wrong.
Re-read the beginning of the First Amendment, because it's such a common mistake that I'm surprised people still make it:
"Congress shall make no laws ... "
The first amendment bars the *government* from infringing on your free speech. It has zero standing or bearing on private citizens or corporations.
Which is why people crowing about it on social media or universities are completely oblivious to the fact that these organizations have absolutely zero responsibility to enable your free speech.
Since Microsoft took over GitHub, everything went to shit.
GitHub, dead!
Windows, dead!
Xbox, dead!
Now security analysts blacklisted for disclosuring vulnerabilities.
Wait until the big players decide to ditch Microsoft altogether, I mean, why help when you are penalized for it??
With Microsoft doing so many things wrong, and users migrating to Linux because even Windows softwares have become evil, and security analysts jumping ship, let me tell ya, Copilot or even Mythos won't save you. AI is as good as the data it was trained on while humans adapt on the fly.
>Hang on.. proof of concept exploit creation and distribution for zero days is “criminal activity” now?
This is what happens when you jump the gun and publish without doing any research. The author needs to lookup how the CFAA works. Now, yesterday, and a decade ago, you couldn't just drop some exploit and walk away rambling about your rights. Dumpster fire takes are everywhere online.
Publicly publishing an exploit is so obviously First Amendment-protected activity that it’s almost tempting to want a test case.