Launches contest at Black Hat security conference

Microsoft used the advent of the Black Hat conference to start up the BlueHat Prize, a contest to generate new ideas for defensive approaches to computer security. A total of $250,000 in prizes will be given away to those who meet Microsoft's targets. The theme of the competition will vary from year to year depending on what's most pressing.

The first contest focuses on rewarding security researchers for creating a a unique runtime mitigation technology which prevents memory exploits such as buffer overruns. These are some of the most frequent types of attacks and often let hackers or their malware get complete control of the system.

The first place prize will be $200,000, while second place will receive $50,000. A third place winner won't get cash but will have a $10,000 MSDN Universal subscription. Winners will be unveiled at next year's Black Hat conference.

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