[ISN] Hacking contest offers $10,000 for iPhone exploit

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:03:19 -0600 (CST)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/26/pwn2own_your_phone/

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
The Register
26th February 2009

An annual hacker competition planned for next month has setting its 
sights on Apple's iPhone and four other smart phones in a contest that 
will pay cash prizes of $10,000 to anyone who can break in to the mobile 
devices.

The contest will present contestants with phones running the Android, 
Symbian, and Windows Mobile operating systems as well a BlackBerry and 
an iPhone. To qualify for the $10,000 prize, hackers must submit 
exploits that work against email, SMS test, website browsing, and "other 
general actions a normal user would take while using the device," 
according to these rules published 3Com's TippingPoint unit, the 
competition's sponsor. All devices will be fully patched.

A second-track of the competition will challenge hackers to take their 
best shots at web browsers. Internet Explorer 8, Firefox, and Google 
Chrome will be running on a Sony Vaio running Windows 7, and Safari and 
Firefox will be installed on a MacBook running OS X. Successful exploits 
in this track will net $5,000 per bug.

This is the third year of the Pwn2Own contest, scheduled for March 18-20 
at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. 
Last year, a brand-new MacBook air was the first to fall during day two 
of the competition, which pitted the Mac against high-end laptops 
running Linux and Microsoft's vista. Charlie Miller of Independent 
Security Evaluators said at the time that he picked OS X because he 
thought it was the easiest.

[...]


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Received on Wed Feb 25 2009 - 23:03:19 PST

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