The first round results of the Linux Reverse Engineering Hacker Challenge are out!

http://www.hackerchallenge.org

It was expected that an intermediate hacker with Linux experience should be able to defeat the protection(s) in less than 10 hours. Participants may earn up to $4100 USD.

A total of 93 individuals registered to participate in the first Hacker Challenge. Individuals were compensated for defeating the protection and submitting a report that summarized how the defeat was executed. All individuals who defeated the protection and submitted a sufficient report were compensated with $500, while a partial defeat which was accompanied by a complete report was compensated with $200 (all payments in US dollars, with payments made anonymously via PayPal). Special payments were made for the first three successful defeats, as well as the top-three highest-quality reports

The competition is apparently run by a US based company anonymously and all payouts are made via PayPal.

We are a US company performing security testing and security metric research. This activity is being funded by a component of the US government.

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of software anti-piracy protections. The results of this effort will be used to improve our protection measures.

Perhaps something to do with the RIAA or DMCA as they are evaluating anti-piracy measures.

This is a security testing activity. All software and software anti-piracy measures were developed exclusively for use in this effort. No commercial protections were used in the development of this test.

Do watch out for the next competition from Hacker Challenge!