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AT&T Sponsors Zero-Day Hacking Contest For Kids
yahoi writes "AT&T has teamed up with an 11-year-old hacker and DefCon Kids to host a hacking contest during the second annual conference that runs in conjunction with the adult Def Con hacker show later this month in Las Vegas. The kid who finds the most zero-day bugs in mobile apps wins $1,000 and an IPad, courtesy of DefCon Kids. The contest was inspired by the mini-hacker's discovery last year of a whole new class of mobile app vulnerabilities."
Maybe its just the cynic in me, but this seems like a real rip off. How many bugs will be discovered in total? And how much would it cost to have an actual Q/A department find those bugs?
Child labor in sheep's clothing?
Glad to see they are encouraging white hat hacking. I hope they remain effective. Thousand dollars seems a little low. Surely they can do better, and put it towards their future education needs.
That $1000 will not cover the full 2 year data plan cost that comes with that Ipad.
Android seems like a much more logical choice for hacker-friendly computing.
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That was my first thought too. However, you must remember they are looking for flaws in mobile apps... not necessarily mobile apps written by AT&T. In the article, it gave an example of a young girl that is working with AT&T finding a specific flaw that existed in several games.
What would you give the mini-hacker?
A car? A house? A pony?
Kudos and a medal is enough. Being able to brag to classmates is enough. An iThing is more than enough (I'd prefer the kudos myself).
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
It would be nice if AT&T could fix their shitty service. They are shit and I'm sick of them throttling back the service as well if I'm lucky enough to even get a connection lately.
You know what they say. Get them when they are young. Maybe they can take the meaning of hacking back to it's original meaning.
Haha... nice catch!
troll. ipad doesn't require a contract, and doesn't even require you to activate it at purchase. go away, you wasted attempt at snark.
What would you give the mini-hacker?
A car? A house? A pony?
Clearly you give them "1337" merit badges. All the other kids get "p0wned" written in Sharpie on their foreheads.
AT&T Hacked By 11-Year-Old. Demands 20 Year Sentence
be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
To me it implies either some sort of intrusion attempt or code-and-go design. Seems like the definition war has been lost on that front. Either way, these kids are testers, not hackers.
Coming to the industry relatively late in life, I've seen a youth fascination with the deconstructor rather than the constructor side of the industry that probably isn't doing any of us any good.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
That's pretty much what I think about the whole crowd-sourcing X prize phenomenon. This is what happens when a society institutes greed as a moral virtue.
I know, I just wanted to vent since I saw At&t ;)
And they wonder why kids aren't considering a career in information security! Because all I see in the news are these contests where professional-level work might win someone a pittance. No one wants to pay for information security. Why would they, when they can sponsor a contest and get people to do it for next to nothing? Where did this stuff come from, anyway?
They say "She found a whole new kind of exploit", and that she's found many zero-day exploits in mobile apps.
Ok. So I keep reading. Here's all of it: She changes the date on her phone so the trial lasts longer. That's it.
We've been doing that for decades. I did when I was 10 too, in DOS, and so did most of you. An entire generation changed their machine's date so we could use expired trials. We did this back in the 80's, and none of us got press as 1337 hax0rz for it.
This is the equivalent of every kid is a winner, for technology. Everyone is a computer genius at this conference, even if they can't code and all they do is play with their phone all day long and try to beat trials using a technique that's 30 years old,and that's not technical at all.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
AT&T is sponsoring a hacking contest? They're also giving away an ipad? Apple is going to be furious!
Not to mention it's the least hacker friendly device ever.
Always laugh my ass off when i see macs at hacker conferences and they turn out to not be hype journalists.
Also, what they may be going for is a situation in which they can truthfully advertise "We sponsored a contest for lots of hackers to find bugs, and they couldn't find anything." (while carefully omitting the fact that the hackers in question were all 11-year-olds)
There's another flaw too, which is this: "Hey kids, want to make way more than that lame iPad? If your hack is really clever, sell it to our totally legitimate Russian company for $15,000." (Actually, that's a problem with all white hat hacking, but kids are generally easier to entice because they haven't developed such flaws as a sense of morality.
I am officially gone from
Maybe I missed something, but where does it say this is a 3G iPad? Even if it is, getting a wireless plan over 2 years at $30 a month for the 3GB plan only comes out to $720. I hate to see troll comments get modded +5 informative based on hate.
What's wrong with a hacker using a mac? If it's good enough for Otacon, it's good enough for any hacker.
done....
Huh????? AT&T is the principal force behind the end of network neutrality, although there are many who would argue they've already ended it.
Why in the bloody H don't you realize this? Obey the master corporation, huh? Say, dood, any idea who actually owns AT&T???
Why is there a slash for "quality assurance"? :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Maybe its just the cynic in me, but this seems like a real rip off. How many bugs will be discovered in total?
Most likely zero. Maybe the winner actually finds one.
These are kids, dude. It's a PR thing to encourage kids to go into software careers, they're not actually going to be useful compared to someone who has training and experience.
Hey, they're taking kids to Vegas. With all the booze and blackjack and strippers they won't even care about the ipads.
How many bugs? Almost zero, because kids are brainless little bastards.