Quote:A warning to website owners has been made regarding a forthcoming hacker competition that could create havoc on the web this weekend.

The contest, known as The Defacers Challenge, encourages hackers to unleash cause as much diruption on the net as possible.

Hackers are awarded points based on the operating systems hacked and defaced - the winner needs to accumulate at least 6,000 successful defacements to win. This is due to start in the early hours of 6 July.

David Kennedy, TruSecures director of research services was reported as saying by publicly discussing the hacker contest, could drive interest and make widespread hacking attack a "self-fulfilling prophecy,".

Defacement archive site Zone-H reasons that crackers will target Web sites they have already rooted because of the limited time set aside for the challenge.

The rules of the challenge state that there will not be any difference when counting a single defacement (single IP) or a mass-defacement (many domain names on the same IP), so Zone-H reasons, hosting firms will be the main target.