Microsoft tries to clean up COFEE spill

By Kurt Mackie
GCN.com
Nov 11, 2009

Someone spilled hot COFEE, otherwise known as Microsoft's Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor.

The spill or leak was noted on Monday in reports from CrunchGear and Ars Technica. COFEE is a computer forensics solution that Microsoft provides for free to law enforcement agencies. It's really a collection of tools packaged together on a thumb drive for easy use by police on the scene of a crime or cybercrime.

Now, the software has somehow become expropriated, and it's found its way onto bit torrent sites.

Essentially, COFEE is now openly distributed as pirated software. The distribution was supposed to have been controlled through the National White Collar Crime Center or INTERPOL.

Microsoft confirmed the leak on Tuesday, stating that it plans to "mitigate unauthorized distribution of our technology beyond the means for which it's been legally provided," according to a statement from Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for Internet safety at Microsoft Corp. He discouraged people from downloading pirated COFEE software - not just because it's an unauthorized distribution, but because the copies could have been modified.

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