14 DAY TRIAL // The winner of the 'Most Epic FAIL' Pwnie award this year will be Sony because the troubled company was the sole nominee in this category.
Founded back in 2007 by security researchers Alexander Sotirov and Dino Dai Zovi, the Pwnie Awards are handed out every year at the Black Hat USA security conference.
The winners are chosen by a panel of reputed security researchers including HD Moore, Mark Dowd, Halvar Flake, Dave Goldsmith and Dave Aitel.
The categories have suffered modifications over the years, but in 2011 there will be eight: Best Server-Side Bug, Best Client-Side Bug, Best Privilege Escalation Bug, Most Innovative Research, Lamest Vendor Response, Best Song and Most Epic FAIL and Epic 0wnage.
The organizers have just announced the nominees for this year's edition and they include LulzSec, Anonymous, Stuxnet and Bradley Manning in the 'Epic 0wnage' category.
The single 'Most Epic FAIL' nominee is Sony which has been nominated for five different fails. One was suing Fail0verflow and GeoHot after hacking the PS3 and trying to get the hack removed from the Internet. "Needless to say, this was about as successful as the MiniDisc," the Pwnie organizers write.
Another nomination was for failing to secure its SOE and PSN networks, leading to security breaches that affected over 100 million users. The third nomination was for the many Sony-related security breaches that followed, including those caused by LulzSec.
The fourth nomination came for the PlayStation Network's two-month downtime while the fifth for laying off a significant number of their network security team just before the attacks happened.
I guess this pretty much settles it as far as the 'Most Epic FAIL' Pwnie is concerned. Congratulations are in order. It will be interesting to see if anyone from the company turns up at the ceremony to accept the prize. Probably not.