betting on new worms

"By the end of the year we will have contracts relating to technology issues. Several people have contacted us for contracts related to DDoS attacks -- such as 'when will eBay be brought down by a DDoS attack?'," said Delaney.

source: Have a flutter on a worm, Munir Kotadia, July 12, 2004.

tradesport has all sorts of betting contracts open, including politics, gas, money, and soon, Internet disasters. most people became aware of this sort of thing through FutureMAP, the US Pentagon program to wager on geopolitical events like assassinations. this appaled most people, mainly because it had to do with death and real people. however, this sort of thing has going on for a while now, in places like the iowa electronic markets.

we thought about doing this at infosecdaily. however, we never allocated the time and we never solved major issues related to fairness. after all, how can you control a commuity that can take advantage of the winnings so easily. obviously, you should disqualify people from winning when they can manipulate the outcome so easily ... we never solved this, and hence our project never came to fruition.

sitll, this could be interesting. how does this related to worm blog? reportedly, predicting when a worm will strike (presumably with what vulnerability it will use) will be allowed. now if only i had a way of predicting such events ...