Hackers challenged to crack patented encryption
Article By : EE Times India
Contestants will have three weeks to hijack patented cryptography method Blurry Box and report their exploits to win ₹35.71 lakh (€50,000).
Secure licence management provider Wibu-Systems is challenging hackers all over the world to test the strength of its patented encryption method, Blurry Box.
The contestants will have three weeks to break the code and report their exploits for a chance to win ₹35.71 lakh (€50,000). Online registrations are open to all hackers at the Blurry Box website.
The contenders have to hack a game application that is protected with Blurry Box and prove they can run the software without Internet connection and the associated hardware secure element, according to Wibu-Systems. The hijacks will be reported directly to an external jury of three high-profile IT security scientists: Professor Dr. Thorsten Holz, deputy director of the Horst Goertz Institute (HGI) and professor of Systems Security, Professor Dr. Christof Paar, director of IT Security at HGI and professor of Embedded Security, and Professor Dr. (TU NN) Norbert Pohlmann, director of Internet Security at the Institute for Internet Security.
In 2014, HGI awarded Blurry Box the first prize at the German IT Security Awards in recognition of its more effective approach to protecting software against piracy, reverse engineering and tampering, based on Kerckhoffs’ Principle. It was back then that the encryption method was first presented by its inventors, Wibu-Systems, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and their research centre FZI.
Since then, Wibu-Systems has held similar test events in 2001, 2007 and 2010, said founder and CEO Oliver Winzenried.
"After working closely with our partners KIT and FZI over the last few years, we are ready to put Blurry Box to the test, before we integrate it into our flagship technology CodeMeter and offer it to our customers," Winzenried said. "Rather than abiding by "security by obscurity," we are opening up the method to the global community to validate. A connected world needs more impenetrable security and it’s in the past that we have found a solution for the future."