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Wednesday was day one of the CanSecWest Pwn2Own hacking contest, and the results are in.  Using fully patched copies of Safari, IE8, and Firefox, hackers broke them all.  They each failed to what is called hacker “Nils.”

The Pwn2Own contest challenges experts in security to find and exploit vulnerabilities in browsers.  And it apparently didn’t take them very long.  They broke Safari in just seconds, and both IE8 and Firefox in a few hours.  Chrome, however, remained intact.

Chrome isn’t perfect

This doesn’t mean Chrome is flawless however.  Previous Pwn2Own winner Charlie Miller says that he did, in fact, find a bug in Chrome, but he isn’t able to exploit it due to the browser’s system security measures and sandboxing feature working together, which poses a steep challenge.

How the contest works

The contest has different tests run, using both Windows PCs and Macs.  Day One has the “hackers” attacking default installations, with no additional plugins.  Day Two has a little added.  Now they are looking at Java, QuickTime, and .Net to make the “attack surface” greater.  Day Three sees more popular apps, like Adobe Reader, added to the mix.  To succeed at these tests, there must be code execution within context of the application.

Microsoft must be pleased

I’m sure Microsoft was thrilled with this announcement, given it occurred just as they were publicly releasing IE8 on the web.  IE8 is the latest browser-child of Microsoft, and it is purported to include several corporate features.  These features include tools that let the user “customize and control the software via centralized policies.”  It’s also supposed to include new privacy and security settings.  (Better take another look at those security settings Microsoft folks!)

The winner of the Pwn3Own contest won a cash prize as well as the Sony Vaio which was used in the contest. 

via: yahootech