Business

When LeeMah DataCom Security wanted to demonstrate the impregnability of its computer safeguard, the company decided to lay down a dare. The California firm, which provides equipment to protect mainframes against interlopers, challenged U.S. computer hackers to crack its code during a weeklong contest. In messages sent to electronic bulletin boards frequently used by hackers, LeeMah promised that any successful code breaker would win a trip for two to St. Moritz or Tahiti. More than 7,000 phone calls came into LeeMah from dozens of hackers trying to beat the system, but none were able to retrieve the hidden message in the computer. The odds against them, estimated LeeMah: 720 quadrillion to 1.