The firm's BlueHat Prize, which is open to programmers everywhere, will pay $200,000 to the person who comes up with what they judge to be the best new way of preventing cyber-attacks.
Two runners up will split a $50,000 second prize and each receive a MSDN Universal subscription, allowing them to develop their own software for the company, worth $10,000.
In IT terminology, the prizes are being offered for the best 'novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities.'Katie Moussouris, senior security strategist for the Microsoft Security Response Center said: 'This is the first and largest incentive prize ever offered by Microsoft, and possibly ever in the industry.
'We're looking to make life more costly for criminals. The value of the prize will go beyond dollars, however.
