Geo: Take a look

[Atrocities]

Hell 90% of all the virus programs out come from companies like McAfee and Sysmetic. We all know they are the ones making virus just to propetuate their products.

"Hacking is not a science, it is a sport."

[Slynky]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Hell 90% of all the virus programs out come from companies like McAfee and Sysmetic. We all know they are the ones making virus just to propetuate their products.

"Hacking is not a science, it is a sport."

You are starting to sound like me (cynical). Heck, I wonder if the tissue manufacturers put a chemical on their tissues to induce an additional need to blow your nose ( )

[Gryphin]

Here is the PCworld article on it:
Caution, you will get pop unders
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111438,00.asp

A couple of blurbs from the page:

Contest organizers have even set up a Web site that outlines the rules of the game. It provides a point system for compromised machines and spells out guidelines for what counts as valid defacement. Windows servers count for 1 point, while HP-UX and Macintosh servers count for 5.

The objective is to deface 6000 Web sites. Organizers are offering a prize of free Web site hosting to the malicious hacker who can reach that goal first or accumulate the greatest number of Web sites in trying to do so, according to information on the site.

Though the contest and Web page may be a joke, ISS has noticed an increase in reconnaissance and probing scans of Web sites that may be connected to the contest, Allor says.

[tbontob]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Hell 90% of all the virus programs out come from companies like McAfee and Sysmetic. We all know they are the ones making virus just to propetuate their products.

"Hacking is not a science, it is a sport."

Actually I do not know that.

As far as I know, no real proof has been given in support of this contention.

Personally, I think even if the companies had thought about it, they would consider the risk too great for any potential gain.

It takes people to create viruses. People talk. The resulting scandal would probably ruin the company and subject them to lawsuits as well. Like who would want to buy their product...I certainly wouldn't.

It reminds me of the assertions made against the US car manufacturers and oil companies about 30 or so years ago.

A lot of people believed that they were buying up inventions which would significantly increase auto mileage and deep-sixing them in order to maintain gasoline sales. Increased efficiency claims like doubling or trippling mileage were not uncommon for these so-called devices/additives.

A moments thought would have allowed a person to realize that this was probably not true. The only way to protect an invention is to register it in the patents office. Yet, to register such a patent and not use it to double or triple mileage would be proof of the assertion.

Since such patents were not registered and deep-sixed, the road was open to other inventors to create similiar devices/additives. Or the original inventor could pass on the idea to another inventor to extract even more money out of the companies.

With the fuel crisis, the need to conserve non-renewable resources and the government regulations for fuel economy, such inventions/additives would be a gold mine to these companies. Yet, there has been no leaps and bounds in fuel efficiency. Just a kilometer or two here and a half kilometer there over the years.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Kamog:
90% of the web servers on the planet in 5 minutes? That's a lot of servers! Or do you mean 5 minutes to take over one of them?

I meant all of them...

[sachmo]

Just getting mentioned on the news is all that they wanted. Everything else is gravy...

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Atrocities:

I would put very little into this story. IF anything happens its because a bunch of dumb Fu** kid hackers didn't get the message that it was a hoax and figured they just didn't get the hacker memo on the Sunday circle hack. People are really dumb at times to believe what they see on TV.

Yeah, Last night I read at /. what the real issue was. San Francisco newspapers were alleging a major hack from some shadowy group. Now I find out its just a Online contest sort of thing to deface websites.

Now I know it's hard work to repair a damaged website. And a small company can lose revenue if it loses its website even for a few days. But seriously, for one day, Pepsi claims Coke is the choice of the new generation, or the HP website links to pr0n. So what.

[Loser]

If it's really an Online contest, I want links to where it's posted. If it were posted anywhere there would be links to it at /. I'm wondering if the whole thing wasn't just the invention of some journalist who now depends on it happening because of the publicity.

It will happen, now, of course. All the little Script Kiddies of the world will be enough to cause disruption, not to mention 'actual' Hackers working their trade. And this is assuming there isn't really a semi-organized effort by elite troublemakers to outdo each other.

Chaos, desolation, pLastic forks.