Microsoft hack boosts Trojan soundalike site

Microsoft may be reeling from last week's hack attack on its corporate network, but one UK company has benefited from the software giant's plight.

UK directory service QAZ.com said it has had its busiest weekend ever following the computer break-in at Microsoft. The reason: it has the same name as the Trojan Horse used by Microsoft's attackers.

QAZ.com's owner Steve Homer said he could not understand why the number of visitors to his site shot up by 240 per cent last Friday. "We have absolutely nothing to do with the Trojan but people typed in QAZ.com just to see what was there and checked us out," he said.

"It was good to see that even though it was obvious from our homepage that we were not a hacking site, we saw an increase of around 300 per cent in access to pages inside the QAZ.com site."

Homer said Saturday's traffic levels were up by about 150 per cent on expected volumes, and Sunday's traffic was also up by almost 110 per cent.

Over the weekend, Microsoft admitted the source code for some of its products under development was seen by hackers. The FBI is investigating the incident.