He is also one of the sharpest developers I have had the fortune to speak to (and do some minor work with on the mailing list) and he knows a lot about performa

He is also one of the sharpest developers I have had the fortune to speak to (and do some minor work with on the mailing list) and he knows a lot about performance and profiling. I 100% think that he found it on his own. He would also be an odd choice for Microsoft to pick since I doubt he works anywhere close to any of their security teams (unless they went through some serious lengths to find just the guy where it would be 100% believable that he just stumbled on it).