Calling student coders: Hardcode, the secure coding contest for App Engine
By Parisa Tabriz, Security
Team
Cross-posted from the Google
Online Security Blog
Protecting user security and privacy is a huge responsibility, and software security is a big
part of it. Learning about new ways to “break” applications is important, but learning
preventative skills to use when “building” software, like secure design and coding practices,
is just as critical. To help promote secure development habits, Google is once again
partnering with the organizers of
SyScan to
host Hardcode, a secure coding contest on the Google App Engine platform.
Participation will be open to teams of up to 5 full-time students (undergraduate or high
school, additional restrictions may apply). Contestants will be asked to develop open source
applications that meet a set of functional and security requirements. The contest will consist
of two rounds: a qualifying round over the Internet, with broad participation from any team of
students, and a final round, to be held during SyScan on April 23-25 in Singapore.
During the qualifying round, teams will be tasked with building an application and describing
its security design. A panel of judges will assess all submitted applications and select the
top five to compete in the final round.
At SyScan, the five finalist teams will be asked to develop a set of additional features and
fix any security flaws identified in their qualifying submission. After two more days of
hacking, a panel of judges will rank the projects and select a grand prize winning team that
will receive $20,000 Singapore dollars. The 2nd-5th place finalist teams will receive $15,000,
$10,000, $5,000, and $5,000 Singapore dollars, respectively.
Hardcode begins on Friday, January 18th. Full contest details will be be announced via our
mailing list, so subscribe
there for more
information.
Written by Parisa Tabriz, Security Team.
Posted by Scott Knaster,
Editor
