Registration Open For Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2013, Prize Money Boosted

Registration Open For Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2013, Prize Money Boosted 

After the success of  'Blue Hat' Security Contest, now it is the time for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. Redmond based software giant Microsoft has been organizing its Imagine Cup student technology competition for the last 10 years and today, the company opened registration for the 2013 edition of this event. Students ages 16 and older can now register for their national events and the winners of these local events will be flown to St. Petersburg, Russia, where the worldwide finals will take place from July 8 to 11. For this edition of Imagine Cup, Microsoft has doubled the prize money to $300,000. Since the first Imagine Cup in 2003, says Microsoft, over 1.65 million students across the globe have participated in Imagine Cup and a number of the teams that made it to the finals (and many that have not) went on to create startups.

Here is Microsoft’s description of the new core competitions:

• World Citizenship: Honors the software application developed on Microsoft platforms with the greatest potential to make a positive impact on humanity. For example, a project might address education-, social- or healthcare-related problems.
• Games: Honors the most engaging and entertaining games targeting teens and youth, built on Microsoft platforms (Windows 8, Windows Phone, Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit, and Xbox Indie Games).
• Innovation: Honors apps that give consumers inspiration and innovation at their fingertips, whether it be a new spin on social networks, online shopping or search, built with Microsoft tools and technology.

The winners of each of these competitions will get $50,000. In addition to the core competitions, students can also compete in a number of online challenges focused on specific technologies and platforms, including Windows 8, Windows Azure and Windows Phone. For detailed information click Here.

-Source (Microsoft, Imagine Cup & TC)

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Google Announced 'Pwnium 2' & Increased Prize Money $2m To Exploit Chrome

Google Announced 'Pwnium 2' & Increased Prize Money $2m To Exploit Chrome

Few days ago we got the result of Microsoft hosted Blue Hat Security contest, where Microsoft awarded a bunch of hackers and gave away an amount of  $260,000. Immediately after this event, Internet giant Google   has upped the ante in its industry-leading cash-for-security-bugs program with hefty bonuses and a hacking contest that will award up to $2 million worth of prizes to people who successfully exploit its Chrome browser. In the official Chromium blog, Google has announced the plan for Pwnium 2. According to a blog post by Chris Evans, Software Engineer at Google- Pwnium 2 will be held on Oct 10th, 2012 at the Hack In The Box 10 year anniversary conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This time, Google be sponsoring up to $2 million worth of rewards at the following reward levels:

• $60,000: “Full Chrome exploit”: Chrome / Win7 local OS user account persistence using only bugs in Chrome itself. 
• $50,000: “Partial Chrome exploit”: Chrome / Win7 local OS user account persistence using at least one bug in Chrome itself, plus other bugs. For example, a WebKit bug combined with a Windows kernel bug. 
• $40,000: “Non-Chrome exploit”: Flash / Windows / other. Chrome / Win7 local OS user account persistence that does not use bugs in Chrome. For example, bugs in one or more of Flash, Windows or a driver. 
• $Panel decision: “Incomplete exploit”: An exploit that is not reliable, or an incomplete exploit chain. For example, code execution inside the sandbox but no sandbox escape; or a working sandbox escape in isolation. For Pwnium 2, we want to reward people who get “part way” as we could definitely learn from this work. Our rewards panel will judge any such works as generously as we can. 

Exploits should be demonstrated against the latest stable version of Chrome. Chrome and the underlying operating system and drivers will be fully patched and running on an Acer Aspire V5-571-6869 laptop (which we’ll be giving away to the best entry.) Exploits should be served from a password-authenticated and HTTPS Google property, such as App Engine. The bugs used must be novel i.e. not known to us or fixed on trunk. Please document the exploit. 

We also like to give you reminder that earlier in this year Google had increased vulnerability bounties in Anniversary of Vulnerability Reward Programbe. Also PayPal, Facebook & many other has already started this paid bug bounty program.

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Vasilis Pappas Won 'Blue Hat' Security Contest & Grand Prize of $200,000 From Microsoft

Vasilis Pappas Won 'Blue Hat' Security Contest & Grand Prize of $200,000 From Microsoft

Earlier in last year software giant Microsoft started Blue Hat security contest. BlueHat Prize was globally  announced by the company at the 2011 Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, offers a grand prize of $200,000, a runner-up purse of $50,000, and a third-place award of a one-year subscription to MSDN Universal--a developer's platform for Microsoft products--worth $10,000--to security researchers who design the most effective ways to prevent the use of memory safety vulnerabilities. 

This year Microsoft awarded a bunch of hackers and gave away an amount of  $260,000. 'Hackers' in the good sense here, the clever programmers who won its Blue Hat security contest, including a grand prize of $200,000. 

The big prize was awarded to a PhD student at Columbia University, Vasilis Pappas, who was handed the check in an American Idol-style contest finale complete with loud music and confetti. The winners were announced during a party at the Black Hat hackers conference 2012 that just happened this week in Las Vegas. Two other guys took home significant prizes, too. Ivan Fratric, a researcher at the University of Zagreb in Croatia, got $50,000 and Jared DeMott, a Security Researcher for Harris Corp. won $10,000.

They all submitted ideas to help solve a really hard security problem called Return-Oriented Programming. ROP is a hacker technique that is often used to disable or circumvent a program's computer security controls. Twenty people submitted ideas in the contest. Without getting into too much technical detail, Pappas came up with something called kBouncer which blocks anything that looks like an ROP attack from running. It's become popular these days to pay security researchers bounties. But what's cool about the Blue Hat contest is that it paid the researcher for actually coming up with a fix to a problem. Not only Microsoft, other compaines- Google, Facebook, Paypal & many more already have their "Bug Bounty" program, where they reward researchers for simply identifying flaws in thier system. But by contrast Microsoft and Adobe don't pay bounties. Here Microsoft promised that this first Blue Hat prize won't be its last, So this may be a sign of a smart new approach to engaging with security researchers for the software giant. 

-Source (Microsoft & Business Insider)

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