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Microsoft Programming Contest Hacked and Defaced
davidmwilliams writes "Microsoft followed their major annual Tech-Ed event in Australia with a week-long programming contest called 'DevSta,' to find 'star developers.' While the quantity and quality of submissions suggest a poor turnout, it certainly caught the attention of at least two hackers who left their mark. Here is the low-down on the contest, what happened, by whom, and screen shots for posterity in case it's been fixed by the time you read this. And unless the volume of submissions increase dramatically within the next few hours, someone may be awarded an Xbox for doing nothing more than rewriting the Windows calculator as a .NET app."
Screenshots dont look too spectacular - how do we know they didnt just create a bunch of accounts and post shit on their website.
Or is that what passes off as hacking these days?
Existing entries were overwritten with the bogus data. That sounds like it was hacked to me.
Maybe because Mono 2.0 was released, but not by microsoft.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
This isn't news.
Well, you're right about that at least. The whole thing is a joke. Here is the evidence (consider yourself saved from 3 pages of ads):
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
So somebody found (probably) a SQL injection vulnerability in an obscure Microsoft-hosted site and changed a few submission titles and comments? This is news? It's not like they defaced microsoft.com or anything else even slightly significant.
They couldn't even do something creative with the hole they found. Kids these days...
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I speak from about 15 years experience at multiple companies and not bias that the more "Microsofty" the programmer is, the worse they are.
The current project I am on is full of the Microsoft way of doing things. And get this:
We have a Linux server and Windows client, and they designed a Windows Registry as an interface to the database on Linux. They are having piss-poor performance due to many design issues related to this thing. I should probably post it to Daily WTF. I mean WTF indeed.
Who wants to be a Microsoft Star!! Wooohoo!
According to TFA, those were valid contest submissions that were subsequently defaced. Not sure whether that's true or not though.
Okay guys, what do you expect from a week-long contest for an Xbox? The next killer web browser?
Well, if you read the article, you'll see that it's not just bogus posts, they've apparently actually managed to alter existing submissions, which is how they became the top submissions. Not nearly as significant as actually defacing the site entirely, but certainly more impressive than just making fake posts.
Who the hell writes a metric clock without understanding the metric system?
Swatch, for one. And the Chinese before them.
"F-" ...I'm concerned, please see me after class!
Just kidding... But actually, its slightly more impressive than you noticed. They modified existing submissions thereby appearing as the top submission. While not groundbreaking, its more than simply posting garbled messages to a public board.
Overclockers