Microsoft Has Paid Millions Of Dollars To Buy This One Domain

Microsoft Corporation has made many acquisitions its four decades of existence, but the recent acquisition is perhaps the most interesting one. Not just because of its nature but because of its paid price which is estimated over 170,000 times than the regular market price.

On Tuesday, the tech giant Microsoft confirmed the acquisition of a new domain named ‘corp.com’. While the value at which it was acquired still remains a mystery, it has been found out that the domain was first put up for sale in February by Mike O’Connor at the price of $1.7 million.

Microsoft saw it as a potential security threat that was just waiting to be exploited and the only way the company could make sure it is in safe hands is by purchasing it. The security reasons for which Microsoft had to buy this domain is something known as ‘namespace collision’. This is when there happens to be an overlap between an internal domain and an address on the internet.

Microsoft’s earlier versions of Windows presented admins with ‘corp’ as the default domain name suggestion when setting up a company’s Active Directory service. Therefore, it could very well have been possible for someone to leverage the domain ‘corp.com’ to harvest sensitive information from Windows devices with default settings.

A Microsoft spokesperson in a statement said that when it comes to planning internal domain and network settings, they encourage their customers to practice safe security habits so that it can help keep their systems protected.

The company spokesperson further added that in June of 2009, they released a security advisory along with a security update to help keep their consumer safe and it is in the same spirit of their ongoing commitment to the security of their consumers that they acquired the domain name ‘corp.com’

Mike O’Connor purchased the domain name about 26 years ago and let it stay dormant as he was well aware of the security risks that ‘corp.com’ posed to users of Microsoft Windows. He also hoped back then that Microsoft will definitely take notice of this problem and do right by their users by purchasing it someday.: Dazeinfo