Microsoft Employees Fired Over Windows 8 Leaks

The recent leaks of Windows 8 suggests that there are sources within Microsoft that are letting out copies of the work-in-progress operating system. According to a well known leak tracker, as characterized by WinRumors, Microsoft has fired two employees that the company believed to be leaking the beta builds.

MyDigitalLife forum member Canouna posted that two employees were fired, and that Microsoft was able to trace the leak of at least one of the Windows 8 beta builds back to its origin.

The termination of employees cannot be verified, as Microsoft does not release such information. Rumors claim that Microsoft fired one of its employees in Redmond and another in Russia.

Given the words of warning that are clearly displayed on the desktop wallpaper of the Windows 8 betas, this shouldn't be surprising action by Microsoft.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • burnley14
    Is the article picture supposed to be a leaked pic of Windows 8?
    Reply
  • sseyler
    brb. Going to check the torrents.
    Reply
  • Fendulon
    Yeah, that is actually what one of the leaks looks like. It's quite similar to Windows 7 at the moment but a lot of the new features are popping up.
    Reply
  • verbalizer
    9288458 said:
    brb. Going to check the torrents.
    amen..
    Reply
  • valpanig
    Wow, loosing job for a few meaningless images that don't look that much different from previous version of windows. Now only option those employees have is to become hackers and do some serious projects to make the world a better place.
    Reply
  • plznote
    At least they didn't get arrested....
    Reply
  • The Greater Good
    valpanig, if you can't play by the rules and you get caught... you deserve to be fired.
    Reply
  • loomis86
    It clearly says "windows 7" in the bottom right corner
    Reply
  • c_herring
    valpanigWow, loosing job for a few meaningless images that don't look that much different from previous version of windows. Now only option those employees have is to become hackers and do some serious projects to make the world a better place.Did you mean images like the article jpeg, or did you mean images like the bootable disk images?

    I don't think Microsoft would take kindly to their employees putting current or past versions of Windows out there for download, either.
    Reply
  • theshonen8899
    Doesn't even look very impressive...
    Reply