Posts Tagged ‘anti-piracy’

In Microsoft’s never-ending battle to stop piracy, it appears Microsoft is considering upping the ante in Windows 8 and other products by searching for a new candidate to help “shake hackers and crackers off Microsoft products” by designing and building “new anti-hacking mechanisms” and “hack detection.” The job ad says the job is “not for the faint of heart,” so I imagine things get pretty intense and technical on this team.

To quote the job ad directly:

Our group is on a mission to build a rich, powerful platform to help protect Microsoft products against piracy. Here is your chance to join a team of exceptional developers as we build an extensible cross-company platform to support this vision. This is a fast-paced group that rewards smart and motivated individuals. We are looking for an experienced software developer to help us design and build new anti-hacking mechanisms, hack detection, and work on the security processor driver. The work touches many layers of the operating system and includes opportunities for partnership with MS Research and other security teams at Microsoft to productize exciting innovations and ideas that help shake hackers and crackers off Microsoft products. It’s not for the faint of heart, but the diversity of the problem space in this area is rich in growth opportunities just waiting for the right candidate. You will have ample opportunity to diversify your skill set and grow. In this position, you’ll get a chance to work on many aspects of the platform, starting with an assignment to drive the design of our application and Operating System (OS) virtualization support.

Regardless of how intense or involved, hackers and crackers always seem to be one step ahead of Microsoft where piracy is concerned. Naturally, they cannot account for every single scenario possible, but it’s a given that they must keep up and continue to innovate new security technologies. Some may consider anti-piracy measures a lost cause, but that’s certainly not the case. For every one product Microsoft sells purely based on theft prevention alone, it’s a win for them. What has me curious is the all-encompassing mention of “Microsoft products” in the job ad. Could Microsoft really be looking to put all of their eggs in one basket by employing a single anti-piracy platform across all applications? Probably not, but the thought of that doesn’t sit well with me insofar as if the platform were ever to be fully exploited.

-Stephen Chapman

http://msftkitchen.com