The Race to Zero

The Race to Zero contest is being held during Defcon 16 at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, 8-10 August 2008.
The Defcon contest forum thread for Race to Zero is located here if you fancy chipping in.

Haven't heard about the contest yet, or just want to know more? Check out the concept and motivations sections. Be sure to peruse the Defcon site for more information on the conference and the plethora of other contests that will be running.

News

[09 May 2008]

New sections and information updates added. This will hopefully help clear up some of the FUD

[06 May 2008]

Thanks to everyone for all their positive (and negative) feedback. We have taken it all on board and will be making some changes to the contest over the coming days and weeks. Check back soon for more details...

Media Coverage

Since sending out a quick post to a couple of mailing lists in an effort to determine the number of people who might be interested in competeing, what can only be described politely as a 'media circus' has errupted :)

We admit, some responsibility for the circus lands directly with us (obviously aside from running the contest that is!), at the time of sending out the first message we were in the midst of designing the system & contest and wanted to know how scalable it needed to be - were we designing it for 50 or 500 contestants? Because of this the website messaging and motivations behind the contest weren't as tight as they perhaps should have been and confusion, fear and general mayhem ensued.

So since that first message the usual suspects have been involved in both balanced discussions of the pro's and con's of the contest, as well as quite a lot of FUD. In the interests of letting people make up their own minds on the issues being raised we will provide you with the links, without comment, to let you form your own conclusions.

Hopefully the updates to the site will clarify some of the issues raised.

Audio Coverage

08 May 2008: Search Engine CBC Radio: - The Hacker Olympics
29 April 2008: Risky Business IT Radio - Risky Business #60 - Simon Howard defends DEFCON's Race To Zero

Text Coverage

12 May 2008: Dark Reading - Evil Bits: Race-to-Zero Could Expose AV
06 May 2008: Secure Works - The Race to Zero
05 May 2008: Matasano Chargen - Race To Zero: It's Not A Contest, It's A Protest
04 April 2008: Network World - AV vendors Race-To-Zero Clue
02 May 2008: Danco Danchev's Blog - Testing Signature-based Antivirus Products Contest
01 May 2008: hype-free - Race to Zero
30 April 2008: Viruslist.com (Kapersky) - More thoughs on drawing the line
30 April 2008: ComputerWeekly - Nerds go wild at no-holds barred malware contest
30 April 2008: heise online - Defcon competition: modifying viruses to bypass scanners
29 April 2008: ARN - New techniques hide PDF malware
29 April 2008: McAfee Avert Labs - Race to Zero, what?
29 April 2008: Wired - Hacker Challenge: Defeat Anti-Virus Programs
29 April 2008: anti-virus rants - race to zero in the security sepecial olympics
29 April 2008: InformationWeek - Will Code Viruses For Beer
29 April 2008: The Tech Herald - DefCon contest has vendors worried
28 April 2008: Sophos - Game Over!
28 April 2008: Sunnet Beskerming - DefCon Competition has Antivirus Vendors Complaining
28 April 2008: Viruslist.com (Kapersky) - Drawing the line
28 April 2008: Channel Register - Anti-virus hacking contest polarizes vendors
27 April 2008: Slashdot - Malware Modification Contest Has Antivirus Vendors Upset
27 April 2008: Offensive Computing - Race to Zero: A Golden Opportunity for the Antivirus Industry
27 April 2008: Eating Security - Defcon 16 Race to Zero
27 April 2008: ars technica - Antivirus vendors pan free research from DefCon contest
25 April 2008: News.com - Race to Zero aims to stump antivirus scanners
25 April 2008: PC World - Security Vendors Slam Defcon Virus Contest