I see these kinds of contests often enough, and after seeing this one, I had some thoughts:
URL1: Yahoo Open Hack Comes to NYC (Allen Stern on October 3rd, 2009)
url2: Vista, Leopard, Linux to compete in hack contest (Tom Espiner on February 7, 2008 7:34 AM PST)
url3: Yahoo! Hack-U Fall 2009
url4: FAQ including answers to "Apple Design Awards" contest (June 8-12, 2009)
url5: Student Programmers Square Off, Gain Real World Experience in Microsoft Competition (REDMOND, Wash., July 23, 2001)
If you have been to conferences where vendors claim their products are secure, you may have witnessed or heard about contests that award money to people that are able to defeat their security. Other contests encourage programmers of hardware developers to create something new under certain restrictions (like developer kit, issue to solve, or time.) How much of these kinds of events are promotional for the sake of getting their own company name into the news, and how much is intended to be an interest without expectation for reward?
In the cases of developers coding over a short period, could this be like a massive brainstorming session looking for new ideas? Give the winner $10,000 and rules that require them to give up Intellectual Property rights for their new idea if they win, and then turn around and sell a product that provides something similar.
What are you thoughts on these contests? Do you see them as scams, where the winners in defeating hardware and software "security" as seldom getting their prizes? What about coders and hardware engineers? Do you think their ideas are being bought from them on the cheap -- even the losers, only to be used to make new products based on the ideas presented in the contest?
Pulling an example of how things can go wrong from 2002:
url6: $100K hacking contest ends in free-for-all (Matt Loney, ZDNet News: Jun 3, 2002 3:50:00 PM)
What do you think of contests like this from the corporate world over skills from the developer, engineering, and "cracking" or countermeasures-to-defense? (Wordsmithing is fun!)
URL1: Yahoo Open Hack Comes to NYC (Allen Stern on October 3rd, 2009)
Originally posted by url1
Originally posted by url2
Originally posted by url3
url5: Student Programmers Square Off, Gain Real World Experience in Microsoft Competition (REDMOND, Wash., July 23, 2001)
If you have been to conferences where vendors claim their products are secure, you may have witnessed or heard about contests that award money to people that are able to defeat their security. Other contests encourage programmers of hardware developers to create something new under certain restrictions (like developer kit, issue to solve, or time.) How much of these kinds of events are promotional for the sake of getting their own company name into the news, and how much is intended to be an interest without expectation for reward?
In the cases of developers coding over a short period, could this be like a massive brainstorming session looking for new ideas? Give the winner $10,000 and rules that require them to give up Intellectual Property rights for their new idea if they win, and then turn around and sell a product that provides something similar.
What are you thoughts on these contests? Do you see them as scams, where the winners in defeating hardware and software "security" as seldom getting their prizes? What about coders and hardware engineers? Do you think their ideas are being bought from them on the cheap -- even the losers, only to be used to make new products based on the ideas presented in the contest?
Pulling an example of how things can go wrong from 2002:
url6: $100K hacking contest ends in free-for-all (Matt Loney, ZDNet News: Jun 3, 2002 3:50:00 PM)
Originally posted by url6