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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.
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.
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.
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!
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