Pwnie Awards: Recognize Your Peers

Dave G. | July 24th, 2007 | Filed Under: Industry Punditry

The announcement for the Pwnie awards fired across the DailyDave yesterday.

The quick description is:

The Pwnie Awards are an annual award ceremony celebrating the achivements and failures of security researchers and the security community.

It will feature awards such as:

• Pwnie for Best Server-Side Bug
• Pwnie for Best Client-Side Bug
• Pwnie for Mass 0wnage
• Pwnie for Most Innovative Research
• Pwnie for Lamest Vendor Response
• Pwnie for Most Overhyped Bug

To my knowledge, this is the first attempt for the vulnerability research industry to acknowledge and recognize the innovative work of out peers. This is important. For a discipline that has existed for 20+ years (i can already sense an email from bell labs telling me its closer to 40 years), it seems crazy to me that we haven’t done this sooner. Yes, calling it the Pwnies is a silly. Yes, some people are going to disagree with having a sense of humor about this. This is a great starting point.

That’s why when Mark Dowd, Alex Sotirov and Halvar Flake asked me to be a judge several months ago, I agreed. I am sure this will be anything but a smooth process, but if you perform vulnerability research, get involved. Email us. Most importantly, nominate your peers (ok, most likely yourself).

I am not the only person that thought this was important. The judges are currently comprised of:

• Mark Dowd

• Dino Dai Zovi

• HD Moore

• Dave Aitel

• Halvar Flake

• Alexander Sotirov

and

• Dave G

Which if this were a film festival would look something like:

• Quentin Tarantino

• Steven Spielberg

• Martin Scorcese

• Robert Altman

• Paul Thomas Anderson

• Francis Ford Coppola

and

• Dave G