| ZDNet is reporting that a challenge issued by Microsoft to the hacker community to crack a Windows 2000/IIS web server placed outside their firewall came to a halt shortly after being launched. The reason? The server crashed. Go figure.
The ZDNet story is informative and well written, so go read it, the gist is that Microsoft placed the challenge in an attempt to shore up their security image. The result was that the server crashed and is currently inaccessible.
In the meanwhile, the LinuxPPC group issued their own counter challenge and placed the box to be cracked as the prize (there is no prize in the MS challenge). So far, there has not been a successful attempt at cracking the machine.
The Mac Observer Spin: This is a legitimate attempt by Microsoft to prove the security of their server product, despite the fact that so far the "hacker community" seems to disparage the effort as an attempt to grab a little publicity. If the company is able to get the server back up and running, it would not surprise us if the server was relatively quickly cracked. As it is, the attempt has clearly NOT shored up Microsoft's web server reliability image.
The LinuxPPC group made a very smart counterchallenge that has managed to get some mainstream press, and this is a good thing. LinuxPPC runs on Macs for anyone who may not have realized this, so the more coverage they get, the better.
Before this is all over, our prediction is that Microsoft will regret having issued the challenge, though we stand ready to be wrong on this.
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