Ex-Microsoft employee Alex Kibkalo, who allegedly leaked trade secrets to a blogger in France, pleaded guilty and will pay $22,500 in fine as well as serve a three month jail term.
The Russian national working for Microsoft in Lebanon had acknowledged of uploading pre-release updates for Windows 8 RT and ARM devices in addition to a software development kit for defending against copyright infringement to his Windows Live SkyDrive account in July and August 2012.
Kibkalo reportedly offered the blogger with links to the files in his account, encouraging him to share the development kit with others capable of writing ‘fake activation’ codes as per the software.
However, Microsoft faced criticism over its privacy policy after it reportedly went through the French blogger’s Hotmail email account to seek the source of a leaked Windows 8 code.
Upon being questioned on accessing a private email account in an internal investigation, Microsoft added that it would transfer similar cases in the future to law enforcement agencies.
