Professional Plus 16.0.17...: Microsoft Office 2024

This was it. The last “perpetual” version of Office for consumers and businesses unwilling to pay monthly for Microsoft 365.

But Samir found it. On September 1, he tweeted: “Office 2024 Build 17827 has a backdoor. Patch offset 0x4F3A2. One byte change = perpetual license forever. Microsoft knows.” The tweet went viral. Stock dipped 0.3%. Satya Nadella himself called a war room. October 1, 2024 — Official launch day. Microsoft Office 2024 Professional Plus 16.0.17...

She reported it. Her boss told her to stay quiet until after launch. This was it

Lena Okonkwo, a senior engineer on the Office Perpetual team, stared at her screen. The version number glowed in the bottom-left corner of Excel: . On September 1, he tweeted: “Office 2024 Build

Behind the scenes, Lena had already patched the backdoor in the final RTM build. The leaked backdoor only existed in the beta. But she kept that secret. Let the internet believe what it wanted. Five years later, 2029.