Yep, the challenge would be in keeping security of the system higher than the level of attacker that gets attracted. We would need to keep the app somewhat secret until we establish a decent level of security.
The problem with re-deploying a vm from scratch is that the app would need some access to the vm host. Of course that is ripe for abuse.
A way around this is for the founder to keep control of the hardware, on a raspberry pi or something. Every once in a while, somebody "wins" the game and everyone else looses access to the system. The founder can then physically restart the game. New games can be coordinated on twitter, fb, or hn.
My thought would be to set up an account on something like Digital Ocean. I think it would be pretty hard for the machine to take over the managing account. Even if it did, well, all that's lost is a Digital Ocean account.
The problem with re-deploying a vm from scratch is that the app would need some access to the vm host. Of course that is ripe for abuse.
A way around this is for the founder to keep control of the hardware, on a raspberry pi or something. Every once in a while, somebody "wins" the game and everyone else looses access to the system. The founder can then physically restart the game. New games can be coordinated on twitter, fb, or hn.