The annual Pwn2Own competition has had it’s first day results come in. The idea behind the competition is to present some “hackers” with a series of web browsers on various machines. These machines are configured by various software manufacturers. The first hacker to generate a remote exploit on a particular machine gets to keep the machine plus $15,000.
Although armed with 62 last minute patches, Safari was the first to go down. It took only five seconds. Next to go down shortly after was Windows 7 (64bit SP1) running IE8 (Microsoft didn’t bother with any last minute patches). Apparently Google offered an additional $20,000 to anyone who could take down Chrome. Unfortunately the only two groups who were going to try did not show up.
Last years results were a little more detailed but pretty much mirrored those of this year as well as 2009. Last year after IE8 went down was Safari Mobile on an iPhone. Google Chrome was particularly difficult. Apparently nobody bothered with Opera. Last years total prizes were around $100,000.
