American Idol for Security Geeks

Ant writes to tell us SearchSecurity.com has an article touting the latest "reality show" idea from the Georgia Tech College of Computing, Information Security Center, and Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center. The "Tiger Team" competition promises to be an "American Idol for security geeks." Students "prep, sweat and show their stuff while a panel of critics decides their fates. But unlike the popular 'reality' TV show, judges aren't determining who can best carry a tune. Instead they weigh students' ideas for making information security more user-friendly, with $50,000 -- enough cash to fund a project for 12 months -- hanging in the balance."

Comments

but....

[Darth_brooks]

Wait, American Idol only exists so we can mock the idiots that don't know what they're doing. I already mock people who don't know what they're doing. It's called:

root@notmine>rm -rf *

TALC? Easy to bypass.

[khasim]

But with TALC, according to Ahamad, folks browsing the Internet will be provided with a visual safety score (between one and 10) that rates Web sites they browse based on other users' experiences. The ratings system will be modeled after feedback systems used to gauge things like trustworthiness of eBay traders.

So, a new site goes online and, immediately, the owner has a bunch of 'bots rate it as "extremely safe A++++".

That's not going to be very effective without some means of identifying/limiting who gets to rate a site.

This sounds lame and scammish

[nettdata]

This is lame.

It sounds more like a VC "talent search", where the $50k MIGHT be enough cash to pay one person a mac-and-cheese salary and get a business plan and some collateral marketing done to get properly financed.

Or, it could be a "anything you submit will become our property" type "scam", where some grad student has a unique approach that this group then becomes the owner of for a mere $50k. They can then take the idea and run with it, and reap the benefits.

All in all, sounds like something I'd not be lining up for.

Re:$50K for 12 months?

[caffeinemessiah]

As a previous commentor already said, they're called grad students. The point is to come up with innovative technologies, not industry-strength products. Once you have an innovative idea, you can put it up on SF or hand it to an army of corporate coders who will do their UML modeling, unit testing, and the whole shabang.

At 69 cents for the 'good' Ramen (Maruchian), $50K would buy 72463 grad student meals. That's enough to feed 66 grad students 3 meals a day for a year!!! SO--YES.

OS/Music Genre by Category

[wmajik]

Pop: Windows
Alternative: Linux
Rock: BSD
Jazz: Mac
Country: Solaris

William Hung: Pick any above. Set root/admin password to PASSWORD. Mission accomplished.

Enough to fund for 12 months?

[unborracho]

Maybe I'll get flagged troll for this, but $50,000 isn't even enough to pay for a yearly salary of one employee at a corporation. How do they expect that much money to be able to fund a 12 month project?