Put on Your Blue Hat, Win $200,000
Microsoft is offering a $200,000 first prize to someone who can create a technology that wards off Windows exploits. It's called a BlueHat Prize, with submissions open until April 1, 2012. Apparently, this is a real thing, despite the April Fools Day submission date.
The prize winner needs to offer an innovative defense, "rather than discovering individual issues," to win the $200,000 first prize. There's also a $50,000 second place prize, plus lifetime MSDN subscriptions for third- and fourth-place winners.
Not even Microsoft, it seems, with all of its developer talent, has been able to pull this off, but maybe there's someone out there to do it. Doesn't this appeal by Microsoft really validate the case of open source advocates that the best defense can be found through community efforts? Or, maybe an operating system should stay closed to stave off the bad guys?
-By Kurt Mackie
Posted by Kurt Mackie on 08/08/2011 at 4:59 PM