Code-Breaking

Will someone more knowledgeable than I am about computers please tell me how serious this story really is?

Internet users on Friday were ferociously downloading pirate versions of Microsoft Corp’s (nasdaq: MSFT – news – people) Windows source code, stoking concerns hackers and virus writers could use it for a new wave of cyber attacks.

The world’s largest software maker alerted the public on Thursday that parts of its valuable source code for its Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems had been leaked to various online file-sharing networks.

Microsoft said the released code amounted to a fraction of the entire program, but that wasn’t stopping the curious and the malevolent from checking it out for themselves.