Microsoft took its sweet time removing leaked Windows XP source code from its own website
It is only a matter of weeks since the source code for Windows XP and various other Microsoft products leaked online. While the best part of two decades old, many people were eager to take a look at the code for the operating system, including people looking for code reused in Windows 10 that could be exploited.
Microsoft jumped to action, started an investigation, and took steps to try to stem the spread of the source code. But the company was surprisingly slow at removing the code from its own site after someone uploaded it to GitHub.
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While there was little Microsoft could do to stop people sharing the source code on the likes of Mega and via torrents, you would have thought that the company would have pounced on anything uploaded to a site it owns and operates itself. But, as TorrentFreak notes, it actually took Microsoft a week and a half to try to doing anything about the fact it was hosting leaked source code for its own software.
A DMCA notice was issued by Microsoft Security Incident Response 10 days after the code was posted on GitHub. In the notice, the company says that the source of the GitHub-hosted code " is pulled directly form a torrent (that was also taken down)" -- although clearly there are still plenty of torrents available for the source code.
The GitHub repository has now been taken down, but it's hard to imagine why it took Microsoft so long to take action.
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