Move over movie stars and your Oscars, hackers have the Pwnies

Always bet on blue

Broadway has the Tonys. Hollywood has the Oscars. Sports has the ESPYs.

And hackers have the Pwnies.

The sixth-annual Pwnie Awards are scheduled for 6:15 PST on Wednesday as part of the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. The offbeat show is billed as an opportunity to crown the achievements of researchers and malware authors, while also relishing in the failures of the inept.

The event will hand out prizes -- winners receive a My Little Pony spray-painted in gold -- across eight categories: Best Client-Side Bug, Best Server-Side Bug, Best Privilege Escalation Bug, Most Innovative Research, Lamest Vendor Response, Best Song, Most Epic FAIL and Epic 0wnage.

The Flame virus (Epic 0wnage), the anti-virus industry (Most Epic FAIL) -- yikes! -- and the vulnerability that enabled the Duqu trojan to spread (Best Client-Side Bug) make up three of the more notable nominees in this year's edition.

Who's your money on?

View a full list of this year's nominees here, as well as an archive of previous winners, er losers?, here.