Microsoft programming contest hacked, defaced

David M Williams
Monday, 06 October 2008 16:44

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft followed their annual major Tech-Ed event in Australia with a week-long programming contest called "DevSta," to find "star developers." While the quantity and quality of submissions suggest a poor turnout it certainly caught the attention of at least two hackers who left their mark.

UPDATE: As of Tuesday 10:30am Microsoft have removed the vandalism - but the screen shots have been captured for posterity in this story, see page three for pics!)

UPDATE TWO: Microsoft called to give their side of the story. See my follow-up piece here.

Microsoft Australia’s DevSta challenge 2008 is on, and in fact at this time of writing still has 19 hours to go in case you’ve got a good idea and can code quickly.

Contest entries can be coded for Microsoft Windows desktops, Microsoft-based web servers, Windows Mobile, Windows Vista’s Sidebar or Silverlight web apps.

The grand prize on offer includes airfare to Las Vegas, accommodation at the Venetian and tickets to the MIX09 Developer Conference in March next year, along with Visual Studio 2008, an Xbox 360 Elite console pack and a Samsung Omnia mobile phone. Runners up win various combinations of Visual Studio, Xbox 360 Elite packs and Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 keyboard and mouse combos.

In addition, the best Windows Mobile application gets an extra prize – two Samsung Omnia mobile phones and a 40” Samsung LCD TV.

It’s all very nice kit. You’d think the submissions would be flowing in from eager developers. Hopefully the bulk of contestants are waiting until the last minute because so far the range of entries listed is disappointing. That’s not to say the contest hasn’t received attention; it most certainly has, just not from the people Microsoft may have liked.

Turning to the Submissions page we can see the software contributed by early hopefuls. I have to be honest, these are far from earth shattering at this time.

The contest brief was to mix new school technology (read: Microsoft current tech) with old school charm. A personal disclaimer: I was interested in this contest myself and lamented “coder’s block” on my personal blog. Initially, I considered a Commodore 64 emulator in .NET until a quick Google search revealed someone did this already two years ago.

It looks like I wasn’t the only one short on a great idea. The entries so far include not one, but two, calculators. Yawn. Another implements a secure recycle bin but I’m not so sure that really fits in with the competition theme. Others provide an old fashioned green screen terminal client interface for Twitter plus implementations of Pong and Missile Command.

So far, however, the top two submissions are by a collection of Turkish hackers and by someone calling themself Ov3rlord.

CONTINUED