Newsletter Archives

• Pwn2Own conclusion

  Posted on March 22, 2009 at 11:56 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  The annual pwn2own (I pronounce it “pone to own”) contest just wrapped, with interesting results. DVLabs reports:

  The contest uncovered 4 new and unique critical vulnerabilities affecting the latest and greatest versions of IE, Safari and FireFox. The Chrome browser gets a small nod for being impacted by one of the flaws, although exploit is not possible using any current known techniques.

  You’ve probably seen the headlines about Internet Explorer 8 – the version that just came out – getting hacked, and how Microsoft swears it has a patch, less than 12 hours after the original “pwn” but just hasn’t delivered it yet.

  Interestingly, none of the mobile operating systems – Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Nokia/Symbian, or Windows Mobile – got hacked. I betcha bucks to buckaroos that’ll change next year.

  Other Chrome, cracking, Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, Pwn2Own, Safari

• Firefox on Windows hardest target to crack

  Posted on March 20, 2009 at 21:03 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Ryan Naraine just posted a fascinating interview with Charlie Miller, the guy who broke into a fully patched MacBook at the annual Pwn2Own competition at the CanSecWest security conference.

  Charlie confirms what you’ve known all along:

  It’s really hard to exploit Firefox on Windows… For all the browsers on operating systems, the hardest target is Firefox on Windows.

  Read what he says about Chrome. I, for one, was very impressed.

  Thanks to reader GE for the heads-up…

  Windows Patches/Security Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Pwn2Own