£10,000 Prize for Linux Virus Challenge Re-Issued

mutantcamel writes "Eddie Bleasdale, the director of NetProject has been offering £10,000 to the first hacker to infect his Linux machine with a virus for the last two years, and so far no one has hit the jackpot. He's re-announced his challenge to virus writers following a Gartner report which told IT depts. not to trust MS server software because of recent worm attacks on their servers, but a Microsoft exec said yesterday that the hugely successful worm attacks were due to 'tardy' sysadmins."

Comments

'tardy' sysadmins

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop the 'y', put a 're' in front.

Responsible

[error0x100]

What happens if someone is successful and unleashes a particularly nasty linux virus on us?

Then the particular exploit will be patched, people will learn from the experience, and Linux will be a better, more secure system as a result.

If we discourage people from trying to break systems, we end up with weak systems.

Making Linux more secure today may result in some costly damage today - but will result in a more secure Linux, which will (as more and more people install and rely on Linux) almost certainly prevent orders of magnitude more damage several years from now. If we allow systems to become "weak", but continue installing millions more such systems, sooner or later someone will write a truly malicous virus, and the damage will be far greater in that case. Think man.