1) It’s true that we planned the “IT Security Girl of the Year” award.
First problem here was the bad translation from french.
We absolutely never wanted to create a sexist award, at the opposite, we would like to promote the IT security field for women (using the french word “fille”, word-by-word translation of “girl” is not a sexist sentence for french people).
So here, we had a problem of cultural shock.
That’s a bad point for us.
We apologize for that!

We definitively didn’t want to create a “babe award”, but just give a chance to women to demonstrate that they can be as (or more) skilled than men.
Do you know any IT sec conf trying to do so?

Furthermore, we accept all criticisms when they are founded.
So, we said that publicly in the 1st reply of sp blog’s post.
“Thanks to pointing us on some misunderstood stuff and bad translations.”

2) It’s true that we used badly chosen pictures to illustrate the award.
We didn’t have sexism in mind.
Again, sense of humour can cause cultural shocking problems (tongue-in-cheek humor).
We apologize for that!

3) It’s true that we used a picture, discovered later as copyrighted.
We removed this picture from our website when the photograph sent us an email on Feb. 22:
“I ask that you please remove it immediately from your site or I will take legal action.”

On Feb. 23, sp posted his message on his blog, including a screenshot with the copyrighted picture.
Afraid to have to deal with the photograph’s lawyer, we asked sp to remove this screenshot, firstly in our reply to his post:
“Please remove your screenshot, since pictures are copyrighted. Thanks “

Since we didn’t have feedback from sp, and still afraid to see us, or sp, to be sued and fired by the photograph, we sent an email to sp on Feb. 27:
“Hi,

we accept your comments on “IT Security Girl of the Year http://www.the-interweb.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/118-IT-Security-Girl-of-the-Year.html” at the FRHACK Conference
http://www.the-interweb.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/118-IT-Security-Girl-of-the-Year.html#extended

it helped us to find a better name to avoid misunderstood things

We just ask you to remove this picture
http://www.the-interweb.com/bdump/misc/itsec_girl.jpg because these
pictures are copyrighted.
Thanks to delete your screenshot or we will take legal action.”

That was the worst thing we do, with an horrible copy/paste from the photograph’s email.
We understand that it was not cool.
We apologize for this, sincerely. We are sorry.
But please, consider that we never really thinking to sue sp!

After that, we completely removed this award from our website.

SORRY for the inconvenience.
We really respect sp, hackers and bloggers.

You have to know that it’s hard to organize a conference.

The Frhack organizers
– Happy hacking

Nonetheless, shame on the con for something like this in 2009, on multiple levels. And even if that’s not the ‘full and real’ story, I think the only thing that would satisfy me is if some rogue organizer did all of that on his own without full endorsement of the organization. Otherwise enjoy the free publicity and learn from the mistake.

– not leaving a contact address, rather choosing to remain – well, anonymous
– using ad-hominem attacks
– not providing any actual counter-argument
– some of the information is factual: FRHACK silently edited their events page to change from “girl” to “woman” to remove it entirely

So, you managed to fail in at least 4 ways to add anything useful to the conversation.