I love this move by Microsoft: put a $250,000 bounty on the authors of the Sobig virus, and let the free market handle the problem for you. Might as well add, „Dead or alive” to the announcement. Microsoft critics might counter by saying that if Microsoft would build a more secure operating system in the first place, they wouldn’t need to put bounties on the heads of virus authors. But that’s beside the point: virus authors are going to attack Microsoft’s operating systems, web servers and database servers regardless of how well they’re protected. This move by Microsoft shifts the economics of being a virus author. Before the bounty, virus authors were a smug group of geeky criminals who would share news of their hacking achievements with their circle of fellow hacks. Now, Microsoft is posing a question to every member of that circle: „Is your friendship worth $250,000?” I’m willing to bet that a whole lot of geeks out there would gladly exchange their friendship with the Sobig virus author for a quarter of a million dollars. And that, of course, forces virus authors to operate in secrecy, which sort of kills the whole idea of having bragging rights about „beating Microsoft” in the first place. Kudos to Microsoft. Where is Boba Fett when you need him?