Hacker Super Bowl – PWN 2 OWN – Mac goes down in two minutes

// Abuse, Apple, For Geeks, Geeks, Microsoft, News, Videos, WTF, Windows

Most Mac users today live in a fantasy land. Mac’s can’t get Hacked? DOH! Read on my Mac friends…you’ve been pwned!

It’s the most anticipated matchup in the hacker world: Linux versus Mac OS X versus Vista. Who will get hacked first?
That’s what organizers of the CanSecWest security conference hope to discover this week as they give show attendees a shot at hacking into the three laptops they’ve put on display here in Vancouver.
The catch? They have to use a brand-new “zero day” attack that nobody has seen before. The prize is $20,000, plus you get to keep the laptop.
Show organizers are calling the contest PWN 2 OWN. 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.

Read the rest…

Also read: Hacker Super Bowl pits Mac OS vs. Linux, Vista

MacBook Air hacked in security contest

Vista Falls on the Last Day

The Vista laptop fell on the last day of the conference.

Since it was the third day of the contest, which saw a MacBook Air get hacked on Thursday, the TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative relaxed the rules even further. On the first day of the contest, only the operating system could be targeted, but on the second day that was expanded to include standard applications. An undisclosed Safari flaw led to the MacBook Air’s downfall.
But on Friday, hackers could target any “popular” piece of application software that you might find on a system. The Fujitsu laptop, running Vista Ultimate, was compromised by a previously undiscovered flaw in Adobe’s Flash software.

More….

Read: Adobe already knew of Flash flaw that allowed Vista attack By Emil Protalinski | Published: April 05, 2008