Hack a Laptop Challenge, Winners and Losers

In a three-day contest, held at a major security conference in Vancouver recently, teams of hackers were challenged to break their way into three laptops, running Mac OS X, Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux operating systems, reports CNet News.

Now I know what you are thinking but you’d be wrong… On the first day all three machines repulsed attacks on the operating systems and via a network connection. The Mac Air laptop was the first to fall, however, two minutes into the start of the second day’s session. This was after the judges relaxed the rules to allow the hackers to attack browser and email vulnerabilities. The security loophole turned out to be an undisclosed flaw in the Safari browser, which allowed the team to gain control of the machine and access files. Apple have been informed and the hackers pledged to secrecy

The next to go was Vista, but it held out until the third day, after the judges once again changed the rules, this time by allowing hackers to target any popular piece of software. This time they managed to find a previously unknown loophole in Adobe Flash. By the end of the contest the only survivor was a Sony Vaio laptop running Ubuntu