Hacking contest for kids at DEFCON, sponsored by AT&T – CyFi’s Zero-Day Contest.

DEFCON Kids is a not-for-profit dedicated to teaching kids around the world how to love being white-hat hacker.  A white-hat hacker is someone who enjoys thinking of innovative new ways to make, break and use anything to create a better world.
 
DEFCON Kids 2 will be July 27-29, 2012 at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas as part ofDEFCON, the largest hacker gathering in the world.  Confirmed speakers include Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine;  Cory Doctorow, sci-fi author; Joe Grand, famous hardware hacker; and Marcia Hoffman, an EFF lawyer.  Partners include AllClear ID, the DoD, Hackid, AT&T, Max Kelly, EFF and the NSA.

One year ago at DEFCON Kids 1, CyFi released a new class of zero-day vulnerabilities called Time Traveler.  The Time Traveler bug exists across all major mobile platforms.  It is a mistake made by thousands of app developers.  At the same time, Time Traveler is a critical bug, allowing for exploit code to run on servers.  CyFi and AT&T responsibly notified app developers about the Time Traveler bug, but few have fixed the problem.

It is important that this bug be fixed and it is easy to do so.  App developers just need more awareness about the importance of security.  That is the point of this contest (and cuz it’s fun).  CyFi loves the mobile app world and wants it to survive.  If you do too, help her find more vulnerable apps and notify the developers.