Microsoft has $250,000 for you - some strings attached

Recently published on Microsoft's Technet Blogs site, nestling between Haiku #154 and Bloom's Taxonomy for Learning Objectives, you will find an unassumingly erudite, if lawyerly, posting.

You probably want to read it.

It could be worth US$250,000.

To get all the money for yourself, there are, of course, conditions. You will need to rat out your buddies to the point that they get convicted in a court of law, and you'll need to be the only person who does so. You may have to pay tax on the reward, too, depending on the regulations where you live, how law-abiding you are, and how willing you are to let it be known where you got the money.

Flushed with success at disrupting the Rustock botnet by taking down its primary command and control servers earlier in the year, Microsoft is now offering the abovementioned cash prize.

A cool quarter of a million: that's the reward Microsoft is offering for "new information that results in the identification, arrest and criminal conviction" of the individuals behind the Rustock botnet.

Rewards like this aren't new to Microsoft - nearly eight years ago, the software giant announced a US$5 million fighting fund to encourage people to dob in their virus-writing chums.

What's interesting is that the reward hasn't changed since then. Microsoft offered a quarter-mil each for turning in the authors of the Blaster and Sobig worms back in 2003 (the authors were never found), and a further quarter-mil each for outing the authors of Netsky or Sasser.

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