prize

Microsoft is offering a huge reward to encourage tech savvy users to come up with new security ideas for its operating system. The company is running a contest for users to create "a novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the ... exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities." Put in simple terms, that means the winning entries have to halt malware that takes advantage of exploits in computer memory. An exploit of this nature is an extremely common source of security breach. It works by taking advantage of the fact that computer memory is used to serve multiple programs, often ... (view more)

A 17-year-old California high school student has been awarded a $100,000 grand prize for a math project that could be used by tech companies to help encrypt information. The award is part of Intel's nation-wide Science Talent Search. $1.25 Million ... Awarded to Talented, Young Scientists Also winning a big cash reward was second-place finisher Michelle Hackman, a 17-year-old from Great Neck, New York whose study of the psychological relationship between teenagers and their cell phones shed new light on technology's impact on mental health. Hackman, who is blind, used ten helpers to conduct her ... (view more)

Elite hackers and ethical computer security enthusiasts are preparing themselves for the Pwn2Own competition, which challenges participants to break through security of popular software programs (such as web browsers). Once software is breached, it ... is referred to as an "exploit", in which hackers are then able to gain access to other areas of the computer's operating system without restrictions. It's these types of attacks which occur on web sites frequently, where visitors become instantly infected just by visiting a malicious website containing an unknown exploit (also referred to ... (view more)

After being crowned the king of search, Google has set its sights a bit higher -- literally. In what it calls the 'global private race to the moon,' Google will be sponsoring the Google Lunar X PRIZE, an award given to a team who can land a craft on ... the moon. (Source: abc.net ) The X PRIZE Foundation's first project, the Ansari X PRIZE, had competitors racing to build a spacecraft able to reach low earth orbit. This time, participants will be reaching for the moon. Specifically, the winner must be the first to soft land a spacecraft on the moon which will roam for a minimum of 500 meters and ... (view more)