News flash – Microsoft employs ethical hackers - researchers who test the company’s software for holes.

Well maybe that’s not news. But, somewhat surprisingly, Redmond has given its white hats a soapbox.

The hackers@microsoft blog kicked off Saturday with a short lesson on what hackers at the company do, and how they’ll be presenting information on the blog in the weeks and months to come. It’s worth a look.

Here’s a peek at what they had to say:

“Of course, there is controversy even in the word ‘hacker,’ but I don’t think that should stop us from using it in the manner I think is the most appropriate. At his or her core, a true hacker is someone who is curious and wants to learn how systems work. This can, and of course at Microsoft, is done in an ethical, legal manner. We employ ‘white hat hackers’ who spend their time pentesting and code reviewing applications and software looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities so that others don’t once we’ve released that code into the wild. We employ many, many smart testers who know more about some of our software then perhaps the architects who designed it. We also employ some of the top researchers in their industry, dedicated people working on the bleeding edge of what’s going to be common place in the next five or 10 years of computing. So yes, Microsoft does have hackers, and its time to introduce you to some of them and show you what it is exactly that they do.”

- techjunkie, hackers@microsoft, Aug. 25, “welcome to a different kind of blog from microsoft”