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Gone in 2 minutes: Mac gets hacked first in contest |
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Written by Daniel
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Friday, 28 March 2008 |
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CanSecWest's PWN 2 OWN contest was won in 2 minutes -- after the rules were relaxed a bit -- as Charlie Miller hacked a MacBook Air
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
March 27, 2008
InfoWorld It may be the quickest $10,000 Charlie Miller ever earned. He took the first of three laptop computers -- and a $10,000 cash prize -- Thursday after breaking into a MacBook Air at the CanSecWest security conference's PWN 2 OWN hacking contest.
Show organizers offered a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and the MacBook as prizes, saying that they could be won by anybody at the show who could find a way to hack into each of them and read the contents of a file on the system, using a previously undisclosed "0day" attack.
Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network, but on Thursday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organizers using the computers to do things like visit Web sites or open e-mail messages.
The MacBook was the only system to be hacked by Thursday, however, the word on the show floor is that the Linux and Vista systems will meet with some serious challenges on Friday.
Miller, a former National Security Agency employee best known as one of the researchers who first hacked Apple's iPhone last year, didn't take much time. Within 2 minutes, he directed the contest's organizers to visit a Web site that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers cheered him on.
He was the first contestant to attempt an attack on any of the systems. [InfoWorld...] [Comments...] |
