Are you so good at hacking that people call your Matthew Broderick inWargames? Do you want to make ten thousand dollars? Today is your lucky day, Mr. Hacky-Hack. The Pwn2Own contest is handing 10 grand to anyone who submits exploits that work against email, SMS test, website browsing, and "other general actions a normal user would take" while using phones running the Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile operating systems, as well BlackBerry and iPhone.
A second-track of the competition will target 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. Then hackers will be set loose to compromise the systems. Successful exploits in this track will net $5,000 per bug.
Contestants also agree to keep their exploits secret until the companies in question can plug the holes and squash the bugs.
In last year's hacking contest, entertprising computer nerds cracked Vista, Linux and Mac's OS X. The only machine that didn't fall last year: A PC running the Ubuntu operating system.
Are you so good at hacking that people call your Matthew Broderick inWargames? Do you want to make ten thousand dollars? Today is your lucky day, Mr. Hacky-Hack. The Pwn2Own contest is handing 10 grand to anyone who submits exploits that work against email, SMS test, website browsing, and "other general actions a normal user would take" while using phones running the Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile operating systems, as well BlackBerry and iPhone.
A second-track of the competition will target 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. Then hackers will be set loose to compromise the systems. Successful exploits in this track will net $5,000 per bug.
Contestants also agree to keep their exploits secret until the companies in question can plug the holes and squash the bugs.
In last year's hacking contest, entertprising computer nerds cracked Vista, Linux and Mac's OS X. The only machine that didn't fall last year: A PC running the Ubuntu operating system.