It's the Oscars for hard-core computer hackers, except that the trophies at the Pwnie Awards are cutesy little toy horses with pink and purple manes.

Build the Next Security Defense Technology and You Could Win $200,000

The Microsoft BlueHat Prize contest is designed to generate new ideas for defensive approaches to support computer security. As part of our commitment to a more secure computing experience, we hope to inspire security researchers to develop innovative solutions intended to address serious security threats.

MacDefender showed up on the radar last week, as the first fake Anti-Virus (AV) ScamWare for MacOSX. Currently, its distributed under a couple of different names (that all display the same functionality); MacDefender, MacProtector, and "Mac Security". In the Windows world this flavor of malware has existed for years, enticing unsuspecting users into installing bogus AV software under the guise of the client machine being infected. Then once it scares you into believing you're infected, it asks for your credit card information in order to purchase the application that will "fix" the infection. In the Security realm we see this all the time on Windows systems, but I'm guessing the Mac user community doesn't have much experience with this type of scam.