A massive leak of Microsoft's internal Windows builds has been reported to have taken place on the private website Beta Archive, along with huge chunks of source code.
The Register reported that about 32 terabytes of official and non-public installation images and software blueprints were uploaded to Beta Archive, with the last upload being earlier this week.
The files were said to have been leaked sometime in March. Beta Archive describes itself as one of the Web's largest beta and abandonware repositories.
The Register said the leaked code was Microsoft's Shared Source Kit and said it had been told that source code for the base Windows 10 hardware drivers plus PnP code, USB and Wi-Fi stacks, storage drivers, and ARM-specific OneCore kernel code were all included.
{loadposition sam08}Apart from this, confidential Windows 10 builds and Windows Server 2016 were leaked along with officially released versions.
Many versions of the Windows 10 Mobile Adaptation Kit which is used to port the operating system to portable and mobile systems was also leaked on the site.
The site has now removed most of the leaks.
The previous biggest leak of Windows source code occurred in 2004, when Windows 2000 code was leaked online.
Microsoft has been contacted for comment.
An administrator of Beta Archive, however, expressed surprise at the claims made by The Register. "First of all let us clear up a few facts. The 'Shared Source Kit' folder did exist on the FTP until this article came to light. We have removed it from our FTP and listings pending further review just in case we missed something in our initial release. We currently have no plans to restore it until a full review of its contents is carried out and it is deemed acceptable under our rules," the administrator said.
"The folder itself was 1.2GB in size, contained 12 releases each being 100MB. This is far from the claimed '32TB' as stated in The Register’s article, and cannot possibly cover 'core source code' as it would be simply too small, not to mention it is against our rules to store such data.
"At this time all we can deduct is that The Register refers to the large Windows 10 release we had on 24 March which included a lot of Windows releases provided to us, sourced from various forum members, Windows Insider members, and Microsoft Connect members. All of these we deemed safe for release to BetaArchive as they are all beta releases and defunct builds superseded by newer ones, and they were covered under our rules.
"If any of this should change we will remove these builds from the FTP and we will happily comply with any instructions to do so by Microsoft."