PWN2OWN! Smart-phone and Web Browser

    HACKING CONTEST OFFERS SECURITY RESEARCHERS CASH AND PRIZES FOR THIRD
    YEAR

VANCOUVER, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire/ – For the third consecutive year, the popular hacking contest PWN2OWN will take place at Canada’s premier security conference, CanSecWest. This year, the competitors are being challenged to set their targets on the comparative security of computer web browsers and smart-phones and a chance at winning $10,000 and $5,000 cash prizes, as well as a Sony VAIO P fresh from Japan and a new, loaded Apple Macbook.

The contest is again being sponsored by TippingPoint, which acquires the vulnerabilities exposed by winners through its Zero Day Initiative to hand over to the affected vendors as well as improve its security technology. To highlight the increasing importance of smart-phone security as we begin to rely on them more, the mobile targets featured in this year’s event include iPhone, Android, Symbian, RIM/BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. The other significant area of risk emerging in internet malware is new browser based exploits. Browser targets in this year’s competition will include Internet Explorer 8, FireFox 3, Safari and Chrome. As in previous years, the contest will feature a progressively expanding attack surface spanning the three-day conference.

Last year’s contest pitted operating systems against one another and targeted a MacBook Air laptop and a Fujitsu notebook running Windows Vista, and a Sony VAIO running Linux. Apple vulnerability researcher Charlie Miller took home $10,000 for cracking the MacBook Air in less than 2 minutes, and security consultant Shane Macaulay broke into the Fujitsu notebook to pick up a $5000 reward.

CanSecWest will take place from March 16th to 20th in Vancouver, British Columbia. The conference will feature presentations and training sessions by world leading experts in information security. Conference sponsors include: Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Intel, Leviathan, Splunk, Immunity, Adobe, TippingPoint, Core Security and IOActive.

SOURCE Dragostech.com Inc.