The annual hacker awards show, "Pwnies" is burning up the blogosphere. (Source: Black Hat)
GeoHot's rap outburst against Sony is among the nominees for best song. (Source: YouTube)
Held at Black Hat, the awards celebrate security security expertise, incompetence
Hackers are gearing up for the annual Black Hat convention next month in Las Vegas, Nevada, and already one of the hottest topics is the annual "Pwnie" awards.
Inspired by awards programs like Grammies and the Academy Awards Show, the "Pwnies" celebrate both security super skills and horrific incompetence. They are voted on by professionals in the field of information security -- most of which would be called "grey" or "white" hat hackers.
The awards will be held August 3 and winners, as usual, will receive a painted gold My Little Pony -- a phonetic play on the internet slang "pwn" for being made a fool of (getting "owned on"). "Pwnie" and "pony" are homophones.
Returning categories this year include:
- Best Server-Side Bug
- Best Client-Side Bug
- Best Privilege Escalation Bug
- Most Innovative Research
- Lamest Vendor Response
- Best Song
- Most Epic FAIL
The "Most Epic 0wnage" category has been add, as well. Competitors include the prolific LulzSec who hacked Sony Corp. (TYO:6758) and others [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] earlier this year and Bradley Manning/Wikileaks who raised an international ruckus by publishing U.S. State Department and Department of Defense secrets [1][2][3][4][5].
Speaking of Sony, the company has been nominated multiple times for the "Epic FAIL" award. In fact, it's this year's only listed nominee.
One of the best song nominations -- George "GeoHot" Hotz's rap ditty "The Light It Up Contest" [video] -- is also Sony related. The song was written in response to Sony's lawsuit against GeoHot for jailbreaking the PS3.
It contains such gems as:
I shed a tear everytime I think of Lik Sang
But shit man, they're a corporation
And I'm a personification of freedom for all
You fill dockets, like thats a concept foreign to y'all
While lawyers muddy water and TROs stall
Out of business is jail for me
And you're suing me civilly.
Exhibit this in the courtroom
Go on, do it, I dare you. Sony eventually settled with GeoHot.
"And boy have we patented it!" -- Steve Jobs, Macworld 2007
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