Safari and IE 8 Falls for Pwn2Own

Pwn2Own is an annual event that attempts to hack machines by exploiting vulnerabilities in a computer’s browser. And just before the competition starts this year, Apple and Google release the last minutes updates for their softwares.

However, a French security company – VUPEN – has gained control to Apple’s fully patched mac OS X 10.6.6 MacBook. Everything only took five seconds after the browser, Safari, visited its crafted website. Next was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8. Stephen Fewer of Harmony Security was able to beat the 32-bit version on IE 8 on a Windows 7 Service Pack 1 using three separate vulnerabilities. Two of these were to successfully execute a code within the browser, while the third was to escape IE’s Protection Mode.

It was unfortunate that the hackers set to take on Google’s Chrome was a no-show.

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