Microsoft: programming contest defaced, not hacked
Yesterday I reported on a Microsoft Australia programming contest to find star developers which had many more submissions from "Ov3rLord" and Turkish self-labelled hackers than genuine entrants. Microsoft phoned in their side of the story. Yet even if the site was not hacked (and suffered merely the lesser charge of prank defacement) it still suffered problems.
A Microsoft spokesperson stated “Over the weekend, a number of entries to the DevSta Challenge were posted on the Web site that are best described as non-genuine in nature. However, Microsoft can confirm that the site remained secure and was not compromised at any time. The submissions in question have since been removed.”
Given the trite nature of the vandalism it’s easy to believe what Microsoft’s say. The pictures I included show what amount to nothing more than rubbish postings in a user-submitted area of the site, specifically, the contest submissions. It would be pretty unbelievable to suggest in any way confidential data was accessed or divulged.
