“I personally like the idea of companies sponsoring hacker
challenges, where a box is setup on the Net for ingenious hackers
to test their skills and win a prize. These challenges can be
educational – for the hacker, the sponsor and sometimes for the
product vendors as well. I would like to see more hacker
challenges, bugs bounties and crypto algorithm cracking contests.
However, it is completely irresponsible and unbelievable to see
hacker shootouts sponsored that pit one operating system against
another…”
“Four days after the challenge was initiated, the Linux system
was compromised by an add-on CGI script with improper security
checks, not by the core operating system. In providing an
explanation of the hack, PC Week labs revealed that they did not
install any of the 21 security patches for Red Hat 6, however they
did install Service Pack 5 for NT. Their reasoning? It was too
difficult to install the individual patches, but Service Pack 5
comes in one easy file…”
“So what did PC Week prove? As many veterans of the computer
security industry will say, you cannot prove security, only
insecurity…“