by , 5:30 PM EST, January 12th, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- WIBU Systems announced Hacker's Contest 2007 for the company's CodeMeter system for this week's Macworld Expo. CodeMeter is a software protection system that runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. The winner of the contest will receive $40,000.
In a nutshell, software that has been protected with the CodeMeter system will not run unless the CM-Stick USB device is inserted in a user's computer. The solution uses vendor-selectable secret and private keys, and strong encryption algorithms including AES 128-bit and ECC 224-bit.
The contest will be running from January 31, 2007 to March 14, 2007. Participants will need to register at http://www.hackers-contest.com, accept the participation rules, and pay a fee of $40, which covers the cost of a CM-Stick to participate in the contest. To win, the potential hacker must be able to run the protected program without the CM-Stick, describe their methodology of removing the protection, and discover a secret message hidden in the program.