• Windows Live And Let Die: Another Russian Spy Caught Tapping Away At Microsoft

    Erick Schonfeld

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

    Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

    Those damn Russian spies are everywhere. Another sleeper agent was discovered yesterday, this time at Microsoft (I knew they were a bunch of Commies). The alleged spy, Alexey Karetnikov, was a software tester in his 20s at Microsoft, according to the Washington Post (Technically he wasn’t coding, just testing code, but don’t blame me if your Windows computer starts sending secret messages back to the Kremlin). The man was arrested and is being deported, and presumably will soon join the other Russian spies already back in Moscow.

    Karetnikov makes the 12th spy caught in the unlikely Russian spy ring. You may remember, some of the other members of the ring, such as Anna Chapman, the tabloid-freindly “femme fatale” who wanted to start her own Internet real estate business. And then there was the Redfin broker, also from Seattle. With the Microsoft connection, that brings the likelihood that a Russian spy works at a tech company up from 18 percent to 25 percent.

    By all accounts, these sleeper spies couldn’t shoot straight. But how many more are in in our midst? I hope they find more red spies in Redmond because we have a whole bunch of great unused headlines.

    Zuneraker
    License To Kin
    The Spy Who Binged Me
    Thunderballmer
    The Spy Who Zuned Too Much

    In the meantime, let’s go back to that video of Anna Chapman explaining her “business plan.”

    Company: Microsoft
    Website: microsoft.com
    Launch Date: April 4, 1974
    IPO: NASDAQ:MSFT

    Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...

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