Saturday, March 29, 2008

Hack This! Linux Last OS Left Standing in Contest

Vista, MacBook Out--Only Linux Left in Hacking Contest

With Vista hacked Friday, a Linux laptop remained uncompromised at the CanSecWest PWN 2 OWN hacking contest.

The MacBook Air went first; a tiny Fujitsu laptop running Vista was hacked on the last day of the contest; but it was Linux, running on a Sony Vaio, that remained undefeated as conference organizers ended a three-way computer hacking challenge Friday at the CanSecWest conference.

Earlier this week, contest sponsors had put three laptops up for grabs to anyone who could hack into one of the systems and run their own software. A US$20,000 cash prize sweetened the deal, but the payout was halved each day as contest rules were relaxed and it became easier to penetrate the computers.

On day two, Independent Security Evaluators' Charlie Miller took the Mac after hitting it with a still-undisclosed exploit that targeted the Safari Web browser. After about two minutes work, Thursday, Miller took home $10,000, courtesy of 3Com's TippingPoint division, in addition to his new laptop.

It took two days of work, but Shane Macaulay, finally cracked the Vista box on Friday, with a little help from his friends...
(full article, here.)


I'm only mildly geeky, but I found this story interesting. Besides, it gives me the chance to use this pic!:

1 Comments:

Blogger Cappy said...

I am MVS. Now get out of my yard, all you punks.

3/31/2008 8:38 PM  

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