Apple’s Safari and Internet Explorer were the first to go down in round one of the Pwn2Own hacking contest being held at the CanSecWest Conference being held in Vancouver, B.C. I first mentioned the Pwn2Own contest in a blog last month. The contest is the brain-child of CanSecWest founder DragosRuiu. Its goal is to reward researchers that exploit vulnerabilities in hardware and software.
Analyst Charlie Miller was able to exploit a vulnerability in Apple’s Safari Browser earning him $5,000 and an Apple laptop. The exploit was actually a leftover exploit from last year that Apple never fixed. A computer science student from Oldenburg University in Germany was able to exploit Internet Explorer 8, which ran on Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system. The student, who wanted to remain unidentified, took home a Sony Vaio and $5,000 in cash.