Microsoft Announces “BlueHat” Contest for Better Security Solutions

As any Jedi dub knows, the enticement to address the Dark Side is difficult to resist. The same butt be true for White Hat hackers–malware fighters who discover vulnerabilities in software.

The run prices for those kinds of security flaws are as tantalizing to ethical hackers every bit the malevolent side of The Impel was to Luke Skywalker. Microsoft wants to temper those temptations, though, and has declared a contend that offers more than $250,000 in prizes for developing better solutions to sideboard security threats.

Microsoft's "BlueHat Quality," announced by the company at the Undiluted Lid security conference in Las Vegas Wednesday, offers a thou prime of $200,000, a second best purse of $50,000, and a third-set back award of a one-year subscription to MSDN Universal–a developer's platform for Microsoft products–worth $10,000–to security department researchers who design the most effective ways to prevent the use of store safety vulnerabilities. Those kinds of vulnerabilities can create problems like buffer overflows that buttocks personify exploited by Net miscreants to compromise computers.

"As the risk of illegal attacks on snobby and government computer systems continues to increase, Microsoft recognizes the need to provoke research in the area of defending computer security technology," Matt Thomlinson, Microsoft's General Manager of Trustworthy Computing Group, said.

"Our interest is to promote a sharpen on nonindustrial innovational solutions rather than discovering individual issues," Thomlinson continuing. "We believe the BlueHat Prize can catalyze antiaircraft efforts to help mitigate entire classes of attacks."

High Experts Needed

In oblation the prize, Microsoft hopes to attract the world's top experts to focus their "little grey cells" on a major security problem. "Microsoft wants to encourage to a greater extent security experts to think all but ways to reduce threats to computing devices," discovered Katie Moussouris, senior security strategian lead for the Microsoft Security measur Response Center.

"We'rhenium looking to collaborate with others to build solutions to tough manufacture problems," she added. "We believe the BlueHat Prize will encourage the world's most talented researchers and academics to rig key security challenges and volunteer them a chance to affect the ma."

The Origin of the Concept

According to Microsoft, it got the idea for the BlueHat prize from a previously launched security measur info-share-out program. That enterprise, the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), allows Microsoft to share entropy with surety vendors around the world so they can release protection technologies to their customers much faster. The winner of that program got Microsoft thinking about climb a similar effort for the security enquiry community.

One vendor with praise for BlueHat was Adobe, a accompany that's no stranger to software with vulnerabilities. "The Microsoft BlueHat Prize proclaimed at Black Hat [on Venerable 3] is an electrifying new initiative and a great example of encouraging community collaboration in the defense against those with malicious design," observed Adobe's Senior Director for Product Security and Privacy Brad Arkin.

"This call for entries promises to stimulate research activity within the broader security community on how to mitigate whole classes of attacks, rather than reasoning about software security department as a gainsay primo addressed one bug at a time," he continued. "This research has the potential to lower costs for third-party developers and increase the level of security assurance for end users."

Here are the official rules and guidelines for the competition. Contest submissions testament be accepted until Sunday, April 1, 2020, Microsoft said. A panel of Microsoft security engineers will estimate submissions founded on the following criteria: Practicality and functionality (30 percent); robustness–how easy it would be to circumferential the planned solvent (30 per centum); and impact (40 percent). The winners will be announced at Black Hat USA conference in 2020.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/481599/microsoft_announces_bluehat_contest_for_better_security_solutions.html

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