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).

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?

When a pair of rugged adventurists decides to trek 700km across a frozen lake in Siberia, chronicle the expedition in a daily blog complete with photos and videos — and share it all on the Internet — it should come as no surprise when Apple hardware and software features prominently among their gear.

Vašek Sůra and Pavel Blažek set out from the southern end of Lake Baikal in Siberia on February 23 in temperatures dipping below -20℃ to become the first Czech team to make a winter crossing of the lake. They marked their crossing of 500km Monday in stylish fashion. “Please, don’t judge us too harsh,” Sůra wrote in their blog, “after all, we’ve been here for almost three weeks and we need to entertain ourselves somehow :-)”

Last Friday, they posted about the gear they are using on the expedition, undertaken by just the two men with no kites, dogs or outside support to assist the trek or help them with their nearly 200lbs. (each) of supplies. Among the Apple gear is a MacBook Air (128 GB, solid-state drive, 2 GB). They use a satellite modem operating on the Immarsat network to upload and download to the Internet. Their Apple software includes OS Snow Leopard, iWork and iLife tools, and to process the photos Sůra uses Aperture.

The day they were hoping to post a video commemorating the 400km point they ran into some problems getting the camcorder to communicate with the laptop. “Vasek thought that there’s something wrong with the laptop,” wrote Sůra, “but as we have a Mac here with us, I was sure it cannot be in the laptop – nothing can ever be wrong with Mac!”

Of course it was the USB cable.

The potential for Apple’s iPad to be wildly successful is a concern for more than direct rivals of the Cupertino, Calif. company. If the iPad becomes yet another hot product, expect flash memory to be even more expensive and don’t hold your breath for solid state drives to replace traditional hard drives on PCs, warns a Friday report.

“With the iPad likely to grab most memory supplies, prices may increase causing higher prices for SSDs,” writes industry publication Digitimes, citing an unnamed source. Apple currently consumes nearly one-third of the total flash (or NAND) memory supplies, the report says.

Apple’s line of notebooks are great computers, no doubt, but you’ve got to admit: they’re slick, streamlined designs come at the price of a paucity of ports. The MacBook and MacBook Pro only have two USB 2.0 ports, where as the MacBook Air only has one. Given how many gadgets charge and sync through USB, that makes USB hubs a way of life for those lugging an Apple laptop around.

CableJive’s duaLink Sync Splitter Cable is a great little accessory to maximize the usefulness of your rare open USB port. Essentially, it’s a standard iPod syncing cable, bifurcating polycephalically to allow you to dock, charge and sync two devices at the same time.

It’s not a big innovation, of course, but it’s a nice little accessory if, like me, you have an iPod Touch, Classic, Nano and iPhone to sync (with an iPad soon to be thrown into the mix), and only one free USB port to do it with. You can pick it up at CableJive’s online store for $26.

[via Technabob]

We close the week with three high-profile hardware deals. First up is a deal on used 15-inch 2GHz MacBook Pro laptops, starting at $849. Next, we check out 22-inch iMacs running a 3.06GHz processor for $999. We round out the top trio with some Mac Pro Xeon desktop workstations, starting at $2,149 for a quad-core 2.66GHz machine.

Along the way, we’ll check out more iMac deals, two offers on 32GB and 8GB iPod touches and a variety of software. As always, details on these and many more items are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Is Apple considering its iPhone OS for products other than the iPhone and iPad? A new job ad by the Cupertino, Calif. electronics maker seeking an Engineering Manager suggests such an expansion could be in the works. The manager would be tasked with leading “a team focused on bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms.”

Such a team would be responsible for “low-level platform architecture, firmware, core drivers and bring-up of new hardware platforms,” according to the job listing posted last week and first spotted by Computerworld.

We start off the week with a number of Apple-related deals. First up is an iPhone accessory bundle that could serve as an emergency kit for those road trips. The $10 kit includes windshield mount, wired headset, travel and car chargers and USB sync cable. Has your internal Superdrive died or you need an extra when travelling? There is a deal on an external Superdrive designed for the Macbook Air. A powered USB port is required. The last stop on our top three picks for the day is a new batch of free iPhone apps, including Car Mania, a top-down driving game.

Along the way, we look at other bargains, including the perfect app if you plan to visit this year’s Macworld. As always, for details on any of the items, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

We’re still waiting for iPad details to come from the mouth of Jobs, but here are some first observations.

Like everyone said, it looks just like an iPhone that met a rolling pin.

It’s way thin. Like MacBook Air thin, from the looks of it. This is bread slicing and jugular slicing.

The Home Button is at the bottom, which implies, like the iPhone, a dominantly vertical based orientation, although an accelerometer flips it.

There’s a WiFi signal clearly visible at the corner, so we have 802.11n support here, but I see no icon for 3G… yet.

The iPad doesn’t have a frontal camera and Steve has yet to show any Magic Mouse like capacitive case tech, although obviously, this is a vibrant, 10-inch multitouch device.

More to follow!

[image via GDGT]

Taking a page from the old fairy tale, an analyst said Apple’s tablet could hit it out of the park if it picks a price that is just right – say $600. If Apple comes up with a price neither too high nor a niche product, Apple could sell 5 million tablets, bringing in $2.8 billion its first year.

“Pricing is key,” according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky. The analyst told investors the best case scenario is the tablet threads the middle, avoiding both the crunch of record demand (like the iPhone), and being labeled a niche product (like the MacBook Air).

As we near the end of the 2009, our minds tend to turn to time: the past and future. Here on the “Daily Deals” desk, the end of the year also means savings. Are you looking to save some time looking for a MacBook? The Apple Store has a $849 2.26GHz MacBook with 13.3-inch screen. Maybe your thought also include saving some cash. In that case, we have a new batch of price drops for the App Store. Although it won’t let you return to those glory years, Apple’s 1TB Time Capsule could save your digital life – for $260.

Along the way, we check out a 50 percent off deal on iPod touch accessories from the PC Micro Store, bargains on AppleCare for your favorite gadget, plus assorting money saving opportunities. As always, for details on any of the items mentioned (and many more), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.