Irish programmer lifts MSDN security crown

Congratulations ! You see Irish can be good in security (even Matt and Lorenzo if they use 1234 as a password ;-)))

Eamon O'Tuathail, an Irish software developer, has triumphed in the Microsoft Security Developer Championship, seeing off his rivals in the race for the $10,000 prize.

Microsoft set up the contest to raise awareness of security issues within its developer community. In the opening rounds of the competition, held online, over 60,000 individual developers took part. The finalists were then invited to the TechEd conference in Amsterdam to go head-to-head in a quiz show final.

Opening rounds were very accessible, and some non-specialist Register reporters were even able to answer a few of the questions. Our smug grins were wiped from our faces towards the end, however, when fewer and fewer of the questions made any sense at all.

O'Tuathail was undaunted, however, and managed to hang in long enough to see off each of his rivals. He said he was pleased to see "a serious focus on security from Microsoft and among its external developer community", according to a statement issued by the company.

A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, O'Tuathail spent the early years of his career working in Europe for big tech companies like Siemens, before returning to Ireland in the mid 1990s. He has his own company, Clipcode, which he started after a spell as a freelance security consultant.

Watch the finals here and see how you get on

Source: The Register