o-----------ooO--(- Important Message -)--Ooo------------o | | | SAVE BANDWITH, SPACE, TIME & MONEY, REPLY WITH PRUDENCE.| | | o----=[ Penguin @ My - Linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ]=----o This message was forwarded to you from ZDNet (http://www.zdnet.com) by [EMAIL PROTECTED] Comment from sender: dont work for microsoft :) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Microsoft to Hackers: Crack This! But Windows 2000 test server appears to have crashed without any help. By David Raikow, Sm@rt Reseller In an attempt to burnish its tarnished reputation for network security, Microsoft issued an open challenge on Tuesday to the hacking community. But potential testers barely got a chance to attempt to break Windows 2000^�s security system, as the test server Microsoft offered crashed and stayed down for most of the past 24 hours. Microsoft placed a web server running the latest beta of Windows 2000 and Internet Information Server (IIS) outside its firewalls, and invited the public to go after target files and user accounts it placed there. The company^�s reason for doing so? "We hope that this kind of open testing will allow us to ship our most secure OS yet," said a Microsoft spokesperson. The hacking community was and is largely unimpressed, however. In its posted coverage, the Hacker News Network called the challenge "an obvious ploy to get free publicity...It is hoped that this is not a primary testing method." Members of the Linux-enthusiast site Slashdot for the most part concurred, accusing Microsoft of using anti-Microsoft sentiment for free auditing. Meanwhile, the Linux community created a counter-challenge of its own. Tuesday afternoon, LinuxPPC, the developers and distributors of a PowerPC-native version of Linux, challenged hackers to crack one of its servers. Unlike Microsoft, which did not offer any kind of incentive or award to hackers, LinuxPPC is giving the machine to the first person to break in. Whoops! If it was meant as a publicity stunt, the Microsoft security challenge may have backfired. As soon as the site went online, Microsoft ran into technical difficulties with the test server. Early visitors reported problems with the home-page HTML and Javascript, some serious enough to prevent them accessing the page at all. Posted status logs indicate that the server had to be rebooted at least once because the system log was full, and some services were unavailable at reboot. Most significantly, the server was offline for most of Tuesday due to what Microsoft described as "router problems". Though intermittently available Wednesday morning, the site was down at press time, and appears to have been pulled from DNS servers entirely; ping tests indicated the MS router was functional. Some Slashdot contributors reported seeing a notice that the site had been withdrawn, but no such notice is currently posted on any publicly accessible MS server. A Microsoft spokesperson attributed some of the difficulties to thunderstorms in Seattle on Tuesday, but had no comment on the site's status at press time. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1998 ZDNet. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of ZDNet is prohibited. ZDNet and the ZDNet logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Inc. - o---------------ooO--(- Disclaimer / Footer -)--Ooo----------------o | | | This document and any attachments are strictly confidential and | | intended for the use of addressee only unless otherwise indicated. | | This message must not be copied or disseminated to any other person | | without our prior written consent. | | | | news://my.enemy.org/my-linux.bincang http://ku.rindu.net/penguin/ | | unsubscribe echo "unsubscribe penguin"|mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | | o----------=[ Penguin @ My - Linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ]=----------o
[Penguin] Microsoft to Hackers: Crack This!
Hasbullah Pit Abdul Rahman - sebol Thu, 5 Aug 1999 18:13:14 -0700
