14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is getting ready to announce the winner of its inaugural BlueHat Prize competition, which will be selected from the three finalists it has already chosen.
The grand prize of this contest amounts to $200,000, the company announced. For those out of the loop, we should note that the BlueHat Prize competition was designed for researchers.
For this initiative, the Redmond-based software giant received submissions from contestants spanning the globe, and disciplines from the researcher community to academia.
BlueHat Prize was announced on August 3rd, 2011, and over 20 submissions were received for it, though only three people made it to the final.
The three finalists, in alphabetical order are Jared DeMott, Ivan Fratric, and Vasilis Pappas, Katie Moussouris, senior security strategist, MSRC, notes in a blog post.
“We received 20 entries to our inaugural BlueHat Prize contest, a response and participation from the security research community that exceeded our expectations,” Moussouris noted.
“We now know contestants emerged from different areas of the security community – some from academia, some recognized names in the hacker community, and some from other venues entirely.”
The competition was designed to reward some of the brightest minds in the security business, daring experts to shift their minds to defense.
Microsoft also explains that these three finalists managed to rise to the task, and that their entries came as real solutions to one of the biggest challenges that computer security is facing when it comes to exploit mitigation.
“We will award the prizes to the winners at a 10 p.m. ceremony at our researcher appreciation party on July 26, 2012,” Katie Moussouris also stated.
“We have notified the finalists that they have made it to the finals. The finalists won't know who won which prize - the grand prize of $200,000 USD, the second prize of $50,000 USD, and the third prize of an MSDN subscription, valued at $10,000 USD – until we reveal it to them and the world live on July 26.”
Those who would like to learn details on the solutions these three finalists came up with as part of the challenge should head over to the BlueHat Prize contest site.