Pwnage Smackdown In Vancouver Next Week

Will the Mac break first? CC License pic by mcbarnicle on Flickr

Next week sees the opening of the CanSecWest digital security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

It’s also going to be host to the annual Pwn2Own contest, where a variety of computers are offered up as prizes to the first individual who can crack their way into them.

This is the fourth year of Pwn2Own and the total prize money has ballooned to US$100,000. Nice work if you can get it.

This year the browser targets are: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7, Mozilla Firefox 3 on Windows 7, Google Chrome 4 on Windows 7, and Apple Safari 4 on MacOS X Snow Leopard.

There’s also a separate part of the contest aimed at mobile devices, which this year will be: an Apple iPhone 3GS, a RIM Blackberry Bold 9700, a Nokia device running Symbian S60 (probably the E62), and a Motorola phone running Android (probably a Droid).

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There are some interesting omissions from the target list this year: no Ubuntu desktops? No Opera Mobile?

In 2009, the a MacBook Air was the first device to be won. Wonder how Snow Leopard will fare this year?

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About the author

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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Posted in News, OS X |

Gazoobee
I find it really embarrassing as a Vancouver resident, that this thing is held in Vancouver each year and that it’s referred to as a “security conference.” No real security conference would host something like “Pwn2Own,” and it’s an abomination how all you tech press people kind of refer to it as if it’s some kind of real security test or pretty much anything other than the PR festival it is.
It’s increasingly obvious who is Pwned by this contest, and it’s the tech press.
Steve
Cracking your way into a machine doesn’t count as security-related?