The Assembly 2006 party is in progress and the F-Secure Reverse Engineering Challenge Compo for Assembly '06 has officially started - exactly now. This is a competition where the target is to decode programs in order to find hidden information. The rules for the challenge can be found here.

To start the challenge, go now to Khallenge.com. The contest ends on Sunday (August 6th 2006) at 11:59 Assembly time. The competition is open to everybody worldwide. The prizes are nice: iPods, PSPs and such.

And just who is the Mystery Author of these challenge programs? We posted about this last week.

He's none other than 17 years old Otto Ebeling. Last year Otto joined us for two weeks - And this year he spent his summer break working in our virus lab for two months.

One of last year's challenge programs captured Otto's interest and it was one of the reasons he asked to work in the lab. He wanted to meet the guys who authored the challenge. His training period went so well last year that we asked him back for summer work. And now, he's the guy that authored this year's challenge! He has also been busy developing new tools for the lab during the summer but now he's going back to school. It was great to have you with us Otto!