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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."
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!
Okay guys, what do you expect from a week-long contest for an Xbox? The next killer web browser?