Black Hat 2007 "Blue Pill challenge"

[Deviant Ollam]

a slashdot article was the first i'd heard of this, anyone else aware of the details here?

Rutkowska Faces 'Blue Pill' Rootkit Challenge

"Three high-profile security researchers — Thomas Ptacek of Matasano Security, Nate Lawson of Root Labs and Symantec's Peter Ferrie — have issued a challenge to Joanna Rutkowska to prove that her 'Blue Pill' technology can create "100 percent undetectable" malware. The Black Hat 2007 challenge will feature two untouched laptops of the make/model of Rutkowska's choosing for her to plant Blue Pill on one. From the article: 'She picks one in secret, installs her kit, sets them up however she wants,' Lawson explained in an interview. 'We get to install our software on both and run it, [and] we point out which machine [Blue Pill] is on. If we're wrong, she keeps the laptop.' No word on whether Rutkowska will accept the challenge."

Rutkowska already thought of [the issue of 50/50 odds] (as well as a couple of other things)

"First, we believe that 2 machines are definitely not enough, because the chance of correct guess, using a completely random (read: unreliable) detection method is 50%. Thus we think that the reasonable number is 5 machines."

She then goes on to detail how at least one but no more than four of the machines are infected and that the detection method must be automatic and return only "infected" or "not infected" as output.

There are some other details she proposes, some of which are head-scratchers such as "The detector can not consume significant amount of CPU time (say > 90%) for more then, say 1 sec."

[Synapse]

Re: Black Hat 2007 "Blue Pill challenge"

June 29th
She had 5 demands, the last one was a no-go.
Maybe $384,000 as a prize, but she wanted it as payment.

[QUOTE=Deviant Ollam;87763]a slashdot article was the first i'd heard of this, anyone else aware of the details here?



http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=340

A quick update to the challenge handed down to hacker Joanna Rutkowska to prove that her Blue Pill technology creates “100% undetectable malware.”

Rutkowska says she is “ready to accept” the challenge but wants her two-person team to be paid $384,000 ($200/hr a day each for two people working full-time for six months), a demand that has dashed all hopes for a hacker face off at Black Hat this year.

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Re: Black Hat 2007 "Blue Pill challenge"

That is an insane demand though.

[Grendel]

Re: Black Hat 2007 "Blue Pill challenge"

That is an insane demand though.

I thought so to, but her argument made sense as to why that amount. Honestly, if a company could create an AV or detection program that spotted her re-engineered blue pill 100% of the time, that kind of money should be a drop in the bucket compared to the advertisement value.

That's also cheap R&D, when you get down to it.

- Grendel