Microsoft Stands By Its Invite to Arrested Hacker

Microsoft's security team took a bit of a chance a few weeks ago, when it invited Roberto Preatoni to give a talk at its Redmond campus.

Preatoni is the founder of Wabisabilabi, a Switzerland-based company that bills itself as an auction site for the software bugs that companies like Microsoft never want anybody to see. He spoke at Microsoft in late September as an invited guest at Microsoft's semi-annual Blue Hat security conference.

But what had been an edgy invite by Microsoft's Blue Hat planners took on a new dimension this week, when Preatoni was arrested in Milan on charges relating to a national spying scandal at Telecom Italia, Italy's largest telephone carrier.

Preatoni's company confirmed his arrest in a statement Thursday, saying that his work for Telecom Italia was unrelated to Wabisabilabi (the incidents at Telecom Italia took place before Wabisabilabi was founded) and that the company was "confident that his innocence will be established if a case ever comes to court."L33tdawg: Roberto has spoken at HITBSecConf several times in the past 3 years as well; he's been a really big supporter and has even been our 'official HITB charity auctioneer' for 2 years. He's a really nice guy and I sincerely doubt he's directly involved in this whole spying mess. :|