The Bellevue Bounty Hunters

I found it amusing that Microsoft is now offering two $250k rewards to anyone who can deliver recent virus auhors. Such bounty hunter tactics may get a lot of press but I have my doubts about how successful they will ever be (remember the $25M bounty on Saddam?).

Based on the estimated economic damage done by viruses and worms I don't think it will be long before someone is offering the following counter bounties to capture various big business evil-doers:

• $1 billion for the person who added support for VB script attachments in Outlook
• $1 billion for each person who did an unchecked copy of data to a buffer
• $1 billion for the person who, after adding all the security to WinXP decided the default install should disable most of it
• $1 billion plus tar and feathering for the person who decided to market Oracle's database as "unbreakable" only to have it hacked on the launch day