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Cellphones Operating Systems Security Software

All Five Smartphones Survive Pwn2Own Contest 144

CWmike writes "Although three of the four browsers that were targets in the PWN2OWN hacking contest quickly fell to a pair of researchers, none of the smartphones were successfully exploited. TippingPoint had offered $10,000 for each exploit on any of the phones, which included the iPhone and the BlackBerry, as well as phones running the Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android operating systems. 'With the mobile devices so limited on memory and processing power, a lot of [researchers'] main exploit techniques are not able to work,' said TippingPoint's Terri Forslof. 'Take, for example, [Charlie] Miller's Safari exploit,' referring to Miller's 10-second hack of a MacBook via an unpatched Safari vulnerability that he'd known about for more than a year. 'People wondered why wouldn't it work on the iPhone, why didn't he go for the $10,000?' she said. 'The vulnerability is absolutely there, but it's a lot tougher to exploit on the iPhone.'" Chrome was the only browser at the contest that was not successfully exploited. We previously discussed day one of the contest, and a summary of day two is available as well.
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All Five Smartphones Survive Pwn2Own Contest

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  • All 5, eh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jav1231 ( 539129 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @08:50AM (#27328877)
    They name the iPhone and Blackberry and 3 OS's. Poorly worded much?
    • Exactly what I was thinking. I went to the article to see what the 5 were and didn't really glean much more information out of it than what was in the summary.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by vux984 ( 928602 )

        Exactly what I was thinking. I went to the article to see what the 5 were and didn't really glean much more information out of it than what was in the summary.

        I had no trouble identifying the five that were tested:

        iphone, blackberry, windows, symbian, android.

        • I think you are missing the GP's point that they only named two of the five devices...
          "windows, symbian, android" gives no indication of the phones they were running on.
          • It's not clear from the pwn2own website [tippingpoint.com], but there is this:

            After much appreciated feedback from the contestants, weâ(TM)ll be sure that such details as version numbers of the OS and exact hardware specs are made available well in advance.

            HTH

          • by vux984 ( 928602 )

            I think you are missing the GP's point that they only named two of the five devices...

            Oh, I see.

            But if that's the case, what were the two -devices- they did name? I only see one.

            I mean, techically there are a couple different iphone models, but assuming a current model, the only difference between them is flash capacity, so I'll give you that one.

            But what's a "Blackberry"? Bold? Storm? Curve? Pearl...? Blackberry doesn't really tell me anything more specific than 'an Android phone'.

            • Yeah, you certainly have a point. And hey, I could be wrong, it was just how I read the GP's comment (probably because I wanted to know about the hardware myself).
            • Now that I've actually RTFA (or one of them anyway)...

              For example, Forslof said that one researcher had prepared an exploit for a vulnerability on a BlackBerry Touch emulator, but the BlackBerry model used in the contest was the Bold. "There was enough difference [between the two] that his exploit wasn't working," said Forslof.

              So, like I said earlier, you had a point, and I think you are right to assume the current iPhone.
              Still wondering what the other three were.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      From the 3rd link [computerworld.com] in TFS:

      This year's PWN2OWN also features a mobile operating system contest that will award a $10,000 cash prize for every vulnerability successfully exploited in five smartphone operating systems: Windows Mobile, Google's Android, Symbian, and the operating systems used by the iPhone and BlackBerry.

  • by Shatrat ( 855151 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @08:53AM (#27328911)
    Apparently the safari exploit

    "should work on the iPhone but the bug couldn't (be) used twice in the competition."

    So the iPhone should be quite vulnerable, but wasn't compromised because it wouldn't have been eligible for the award since it was the same exploit used against OS X in the first day.

    • by linhux ( 104645 )

      It's quite possible for Mobile Safari in iPhone to be vulnerable without that making the phone pwnable. For example, one reason could be that the iPhone OS kernel is only able to execute signed code - unless the phone has been pwned and the signing restrictions disabled. There are probably ways around this from userland, too, but I guess they are pretty hard to find and even harder to exploit. And also, owning Mobile Safari would only give you a uid 501 process, from there you'd have to find some way to esc

    • by Lars T. ( 470328 )

      Apparently the safari exploit

      "should work on the iPhone but the bug couldn't (be) used twice in the competition."

      So the iPhone should be quite vulnerable, but wasn't compromised because it wouldn't have been eligible for the award since it was the same exploit used against OS X in the first day.

      That makes two things apparent:
      A) Miller only had one fault left (and didn't find a new one since he found it a year ago).
      B) He wanted the MacBook Air more than an iPhone and $10,000 in cash. Or he was so scared that somebody else had found the bug that he drew fast. Or the fucking bug does not work on the iPhone.

      Okay, only one of these is apparent, that would be A)

    • I read pretty much this same story on another site (which escapes me at the moment) claiming that Safari-Hack Guy DID have an iPhone exploit but wanted more than $10,000 for it, not because it was ineligible.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:00AM (#27329021)
    I saw one of them Symbian's on the internet once. But I didn't know it could have a browser. I thought it was used more for content production.
    • The Nokia E71 is a kick-ass phone with a kick-ass browser also based on WebKit. Yes, I have one and love it. :-]
  • by Thornburg ( 264444 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:05AM (#27329093)

    Chrome was the only browser in the contest that was not successfully exploited... why didn't they include Opera, or any of the non-webkit open source browsers other than Firefox? (Ok, they may be fairly obscure, but surely Opera is well known enough, right?)

    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:08AM (#27329149)

      They didn't want to give Opera any more ammunition against the other browsers.

      • by pxlmusic ( 1147117 ) <pxlent@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:14AM (#27329211) Homepage

        as someone who recently gave Opera another go, i can see why.

        i would appear that i've been missing out

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by n1ckml007 ( 683046 )
          yeah I tend to sing Opera's praises.
          • Please, I beg you: STOP!
            --Your next-door neighbor
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Kamokazi ( 1080091 )

          I switched to Opera when FF was in version 2, because Opera was considerably faster in most cases. Now that FF is up to speed with Opera, I'm still with it because I'm more familiar with it...and it feels more 'complete' out of the box to me...no need for extensions. For someone who uses it regularly on four different machines (and irregularly on several more), that's important.

          Sure, it's not open source, but I'm concerned about free beer more than free speech (not to say that it's unimportant, I just hav

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by worip ( 1463581 )
      Chrome is also one of the newest browsers in the market. The longer a browser is out there, the longer the time someone can develop a hack for it. I bet for the next contest, presuming that Chrome will still be around, there will be a few Chrome hacks to go around.
    • Thanks, I was about to comment on this, but you beat me to it.

      It's poor reporting, really. Make Chrome look like a hero, when there are other browsers that just weren't tested at all... (and would most likely pass).

      [posted from opera]
    • by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @10:48AM (#27330387)

      Chrome was the only browser in the contest that was not successfully exploited... why didn't they include Opera

      For the same reason high school sports teams don't play NFL teams; it just would be disheartening to the players.

      My guess is that Opera never really got the attention because it never had a big company pushing it (MS, Apple, Google, and Firefox had the whole Mozilla/FOSS thing).

    • Maybe Opera refused to take part? Who knows..

      • by hkmwbz ( 531650 )
        How can Opera refuse to take part? It's not like their permission is required to download the browser.
  • http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9193300&tstart=0 [apple.com] I'm suprised this bug hasn't be used as a "toe hold" for an exploit.
  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by LizardKing ( 5245 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:42AM (#27329537)

    Miller's 10-second hack of a MacBook via an unpatched Safari vulnerability that he'd known about for more than a year.

    Definitely a black hat then, as I'm assuming if he'd reported the vulnerability when he'd found it even Apple would have patched it by now.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Yamamato ( 1513927 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @10:08AM (#27329879)
      No, it's because he's not going to do free work for Apple.

      Did you consider reporting the vulnerability to Apple?

      I never give up free bugs. I have a new campaign. It's called NO MORE FREE BUGS. Vulnerabilities have a market value so it makes no sense to work hard to find a bug, write an exploit and then give it away. Apple pays people to do the same job so we know there's value to this work. No more free bugs.

      • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)

        by LizardKing ( 5245 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @10:22AM (#27330069)

        No, it's because he's not going to do free work for Apple.

        That's precisely the attitude of a black hat. A responsible hacker notifies the vendor or author of the issue, giving them a reasonable amount of time to release a fix. If the fix is forthcoming in a timely manner, the hacker should be thanked in the release notes and is then free to post a description of the issue along with a proof of concept exploit if they like. If a fix is not forthcoming in a timely manner, and no reasonable explanation given by the vendor or author, then the hacker releases the description in the knowledge that they've adhered to the widely acknowledged good practice. This is responsible full disclosure.

        A black hat doesn't notify the vendor in order to gain some kind of material benefit - be it selling the exploit or using it directly for personal gain. Funnily enough personal gain is what this guy did it for, making him a scumbag black hat hacker.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Yamamato ( 1513927 )
          No, he's just not an idiot. BTW Apple pays people to report verifiable bugs to them. Does that make all those people black hats too? You never actually mentioned why he should do free work for Apple when they pay others to do the same thing.

          You talked earlier about the value of vulnerabilities. Was it a surprise that he (Nils) basically gave up three "high-value" bugs for $5,000 each?

          It's clear he's incredibly talented. I was shocked when I saw someone sign up to go after IE 8. You can get paid a lot more than $5,000 for one of those bugs. I've talked to a lot of smart, knowledgeable people and no one knows exactly how he did it. He could easily get $50,000 for that vulnerability. I'd say $50,000 is a low-end price point.

          For the amount of time he spent to do what he did on IE and Firefox, he could have found and exploited five or 10 Safari bugs. With the way they're paying $5,000 for every verifiable bug, he could have spent that same time and resources and make $25,000 or $30,000 easily just by going after Safari on Mac.

          • BTW Apple pays people to report verifiable bugs to them.

            So your original point is moot - he could of been paid by Apple for finding and reporting issues. The fact he didn't makes it even more suspicious that he had something else in mind, perhaps selling to someone prepared to pay more. I wonder who that someone might be? Surely not someone with less than entirely innocent intentions? To be honest though, all this talk of people paying tens of thousands of dollars for an exploit sounds more like a black h

            • The fact he didn't makes it even more suspicious that he had something else in mind, perhaps selling to someone prepared to pay more.

              Or maybe he wanted to win Pwn2Own? I mean it is a sport right?

              He didn't release his vulnerability, TipPoint secured the rights to the exploit, and a Apple representative was there to witness the exploit and to get the details.

              So where is the conspiracy?

          • No, he's just not an idiot. BTW Apple pays people to report verifiable bugs to them.

            Interesting. Since I (and perhaps others) have never heard of this, perhaps you could corroborate your story with a link to Apple's policy on this?

        • I beg to differ.

          urbandictionary:

          1- A Hacker (Or rather cracker, but that's a different discussion) who uses his abilities for malicious purposes.

          2- Anything relating to malicious use of the internet.

          wiktionary:

          A malicious hacker who commits illegal acts.

          other relevant definitions from google: (disregarding the ones about actual hats, westerns, search engines, and judaism)

          Black hat is used to describe a hacker (or cracker) who breaks into a computer system or network with malicious intent. Unlike a white hat hacker, the black hat hacker takes advantage of the break-in, perhaps destroying files or stealing data for some purpose.

          A malicious hacker who exploits - or publicises - a security weakness before informing the affected organisation.

          Nowhere was "personal gain" mentioned. "Black hat" was always applied to individuals with "malicious" motives and/or whose actions are "illegal". Winning the prize money in a contest is neither of those.

        • A responsible hacker notifies the vendor or author of the issue, giving them a reasonable amount of time to release a fix.

          I think this is putting too much responsibility on the hacker. I would argue that the only responsibility the hacker has is to not use the exploit in a malicious manner. And asking for payment from the vendor for the work done by the hacker is not malicious. It is business.

          The "personal gain" you reference should be limited to the enjoyment of investigating and engineering the exploit in the first place. If the exploit is released in any way, then I am on your side, and they become scumbag black ha

          • And asking for payment from the vendor for the work done by the hacker is not malicious. It is business.

            You've got to be careful though, it could also be blackmail.

            • You've got to be careful though, it could also be blackmail

              Absolutely.

              Of course blackmailing the vendor would 1)be malicious and 2)involve releasing the exploit. Both of those would go far beyond the stance I am defending.

              • It doesn't involve releasing the exploit per se - simply telling the vendor that you have an exploit and want to be paid could qualify. The implication is that you possess damaging information about the vendor - who knows what happens if money doesn't change hands. Even if you don't release it, you might be able to give your buddies hints on where to look.

                • You are trying to find a workaround on a very static point.

                  The static point is that if you find an exploit, you are under no obligation to inform the vendor. You are not evil if you do not inform the vendor.

                  What would make you evil includes, but is not limited to:
                  • Hinting that you will release the exploit if they do not pay you.
                  • Hinting to your buddies where to look for the exploit.
                  • Releasing the exploit to the world.
                  • Abusing the exploit for "personal gain"

                  I agree that there are far more ways to be evi

                  • The static point is that if you find an exploit, you are under no obligation to inform the vendor. You are not evil if you do not inform the vendor.

                    I couldn't disagree more. If I walk by a house and see that the door is standing wide open, and then I see the owner on the street a couple minutes later, the ethics are clear. I should tell the guy he left his door open. I'm under no legal obligation but I should because it is the right thing to do. If he gets robbed later I should feel bad because I could have helped prevent it.

                    Well maybe you say, no, they're a business. Doesn't matter. If I'm in a jewelry store and see that a clerk forgot to put away a d

                    • Okay, that was more convincing.

                      We do live in an age where whistleblowing has become a recognized responsibility in all fields, and taking an uninvolved stance does not always remove obligation.

                      I was trying to make a point about the existence of a neutral position, but when framed as an ethical question, as opposed to a legal question, it takes on a very different light. The neutral stance would be to ignore the obvious ethical thing to do. While the evil thing to do is to take advantage of the explo
        • by huge ( 52607 )

          That's precisely the attitude of a black hat.

          No, that's hard-core capitalism - supply and demand; all that jazz. Apple doesn't see any value in his product (exploit) so they aren't willing to pay. Somebody else could be willing to pay for what he has so he could sell it to them instead.

          Normally when there is much more supply than demand then manufacturer needs to start advertising to make sure that the potential buyers are aware that product exists. When there is more demand but almost no supply, then potential buyers will advertise to every potential

        • by jomuyo ( 1082721 )
          I agree with LizardKing's post. To know about a security venerability and not tell anyone for more than an year is completely immoral and wrong. The attitude that one should only report security vulnerabilities for some type of payment is a dangerous precedent. If this type a behavior made it into the FLOSS community, it would be a disaster. Say I found a venerability in Firefox. Should I go to the Mozilla Foundation and demand payment for finding this bug? Of course not, that is like asking for a ran
      • by mkiwi ( 585287 )

        Vulnerabilities have a market value so it makes no sense to work hard to find a bug, write an exploit and then give it away.

        Emphasis mine. The very quote you mentioned clearly states he uses exploits for profit. The GP is completely right- this guy is a black hat.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Yamamato ( 1513927 )

          Emphasis mine.

          There is no emphasis...

          The very quote you mentioned clearly states he uses exploits for profit.

          No it doesn't. He said he's not going to go through the trouble of finding and bugs and writing an exploit and then giving it away to Apple for free when they pay others money to do the exact same thing.

          The GP is completely right- this guy is a black hat.

          Sorry, the GP is wrong unless you have some information of him actually using any exploits for malicious use which I doubt you have.

          • He said he's not going to go through the trouble of finding and bugs and writing an exploit and then giving it away to Apple for free when they pay others money to do the exact same thing.

            I guess I missed the part where someone put a gun to his head and forced him to go through all that trouble. He's right that some people do get paid to find bugs--and if he wants to get paid, he should get one of those jobs. Otherwise, yes, he's a black hat. Dark grey, minimum. It's not like this is the only thing a programmer can choose to do with their skills and time.

      • and also

        I could get more than $5,000 for it but I like the idea of coming here and showcasing what I can do and get some headlines for the company I work for (Independent Security Evaluators).

        Because everyone wants to hire a security firm that employs morally bankrupt people. I'm sure his employers are so proud.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      That's a bad assumption. Apple tends to sweep security problems under the rug as much as possible.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Yamamato ( 1513927 )
        Plus he added a few more funny things about OSX.

        Why Safari? Why didn't you go after IE or Safari?

        It's really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit. The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don't do. Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don't have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you'd find in Windows.

        It's more about the operating system than the (target) program. Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too. The underlying OS doesn't have anti-exploit stuff built into it.

        With my Safari exploit, I put the code into a process and I know exactly where it's going to be. There's no randomization. I know when I jump there, the code is there and I can execute it there. On Windows, the code might show up but I don't know where it is. Even if I get to the code, it's not executable. Those are two hurdles that Macs don't have.

        It's clear that all three browsers (Safari, IE and Firefox) have bugs. Code execution holes everywhere. But that's only half the equation. The other half is exploiting it. There's almost no hurdle to jump through on Mac OS X.

        Looks like all that supposed security you hear about in Mac OS X is really just a huge joke.

        • But Macs are pretty and EVERYONE knows that Windows is bad, so as long as we keep up the Microsoft critique about their security, we can ignore Macs... especially since so few people use them, it's not worth it (except in contests) to exploit them...
        • I don't think anyone claimed that OS X was or would be going forward perfect. That doesn't mean that it is not well ahead of Windows in terms of a secure design.

          • I don't think anyone claimed that OS X was or would be going forward perfect. That doesn't mean that it is not well ahead of Windows in terms of a secure design.

            The quote makes it clear that in fact, OSX is well behind Windows in terms of secure design. It doesn't have NX (or similar) support, and it doesn't have address randomization, and that's fucking pathetic because both technologies predate OSX considerably*, but neither predates Windows XP.

            * I don't think literal NX bit support predates OSX, but the idea is older and does not require hardware support to implement, although hardware support improves things considerably. You can still have support for non-exec

            • by Lars T. ( 470328 )
              So if Mac OS X is so damn unsecure and Windows XP is so fucking secure, why are there far more exploits out for XP? Marketshare?
              • I believe that's exactly what he's saying. I make no statement as to whether I can agree or not though.

          • Isn't that explicitly what the GP is pointing out - that it is light years behind Windows in terms of secure design?
          • by Chutulu ( 982382 )
            don't you know how to read?
        • Looks like all that supposed security you hear about in Mac OS X is really just a huge joke.

          Not really. The ASLR can be bypassed, and the NX support is indeed quite incomplete in Leopard (it's heap only IIRC), but the real strength of OS X's security comes from the Unix permissions model. It's still very tricky to write malware that, say, turns a Mac into a zombied warez server. It's still difficult to get root, which would be necessary to do most of the useful things you can do with a compromised box.

          On Windows, once you've got access to a user account you've got root, since 9 times out of 10

          • by brkello ( 642429 )
            How do you know that none of them are zombies? Show me a citation on that. And I have been saying for years once Mac's get more popular, you will see a lot more exploits for them. They still aren't near enough to be as tempting as windows boxes. But really, it's this smug attitude that OS X is this bastion of security and you don't need to run firewalls or AVs that is going to make you all sitting ducks someday.
          • by weicco ( 645927 )

            I would consider system which requires root access to send data to internet a) not very secure b) not very usable. And I really much doubt that you need root access to connect to internet on Mac OS X. UNIX permission model doesn't help shit in this kind of situation.

        • Re:Hmm (Score:4, Funny)

          by Phroggy ( 441 ) <slashdot3@NOsPaM.phroggy.com> on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @01:44PM (#27333315) Homepage

          Looks like all that supposed security you hear about in Mac OS X is really just a huge joke.

          A lot of it is, yes. And, some of that supposed security in Windows Vista... really is improved security, not a joke.

          From the average user's perspective, Macs are more secure right now, because they're not targeted. I don't run any antivirus software on my Mac, because I'm confident that I won't encounter a Mac virus. In general, the people writing viruses don't know how to write for Macs, and the people writing for Macs don't want to write viruses. There used to be a handful of Mac viruses back in the 90s, but those have all gone away. Every once in awhile we hear about a new proof of concept, but nothing ever really comes of it.

          But there's nothing inherent about the way Mac OS X works that guarantees this situation to remain true. As Macs gain marketshare, they'll gain mindshare among malware authors. As buying a Mac becomes a more attractive option to regular people, it will become a more attractive option to malware authors, and once they have a Mac to play with, they'll start writing malware for it.

          Meanwhile, everybody says Vista is a joke; they'll upgrade when you pry XP from their cold dead fingers. People who have never even tried Vista bitch about "Cancel / Allow" dialogs. They say Microsoft completely dropped the ball by breaking compatibility with older software. While I'll be the first to agree that UAC's UI leaves much to be desired, I do leave it turned on*, and I generally know when to expect a prompt. For the thing in the system tray that needs Administrator privileges, I went to the trouble of working around UAC by adding it as a scheduled task that runs on login - this is far too complicated for normal users, and obviously either the software that needs this needs to be updated, or UAC needs an "always allow" option.

          Microsoft broke compatibility because they had to in order to improve security. Every once in awhile an argument breaks out on Slashdot that goes something like this:

          1) Windows sucks, because normal user accounts have Administrator privileges, which is just like running as root on Linux, which nobody ever does.
          2) That's because if you don't have Administrator privileges, half your applications won't run.
          3) Windows sucks, because Linux apps run just fine without needing root privileges.
          4) It's not Microsoft's fault, it's the application developers' fault for designing their app with the expectation that it will always have Administrator privileges.
          5) It is Microsoft's fault, because those app devs designed their app to work on Win98, which had no concept of per-user security, so apps could reliably expect to have unfettered write access to C:\Program Files. Microsoft shouldn't have allowed this.
          6) Macs are awesome!
          7) It's the year of Linux on the desktop!
          8) Shut up, both of you.

          Microsoft knew the status quo was broken, and that brokenness isn't sustainable. Their only long-term choice was to break compatibility by forcing applications to conform to new security standards. They've done that, and everyone bitched, but the apps have been fixed. Nobody realizes the apps have been fixed, because everybody switched back to (or stayed with) XP, but Windows 7 will be hugely popular (Microsoft is also fixing some of the real problems with Vista).

      • Apple tends to sweep security problems under the rug as much as possible.

        Their track record has been a bit variable, but by his own admission this guy didn't contact Apple. He sat on the exploit, in the knowledge that it could be used for no good by others, making him little better than the really bad guys. He then used the exploit for personal gain. Classy.

  • by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:44AM (#27329561) Journal

    "none....was..." puhleeze!

  • Phones (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    A quick Google Pulled up the Phones as:

    Phones (and associated test platform)

            * Blackberry(TBA)
            * Android(Dev G1)
            * iPhone(locked 2.0)
            * Nokia/Symbian(N95-1)
            * Windows Mobile (HTC Touch)

    • Re:Phones (Score:4, Informative)

      by Thornburg ( 264444 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:53AM (#27329717)

      A quick Google Pulled up the Phones as:

      Phones (and associated test platform)

              * Blackberry(TBA)

              * Android(Dev G1)

              * iPhone(locked 2.0)

              * Nokia/Symbian(N95-1)

              * Windows Mobile (HTC Touch)

      The Blackberry was apparently a "Bold", at least, that's what one of the related blog posts refers to.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by petehead ( 1041740 )

      A quick Google Pulled up the Phones as: Phones (and associated test platform) * Blackberry(TBA)
      * Android(Dev G1)
      * iPhone(locked 2.0)
      * Nokia/Symbian(N95-1)
      * Windows Mobile (HTC Touch)

      I have the HTC Touch. It has a built in security feature: It will crash whatever you are running to try to exploit it. If anyone here figures out how to exploit it, please tell Microsoft. Not so that they will patch it, but so they can use it as an example to developers for how to code.

  • by Deathlizard ( 115856 ) on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @10:00AM (#27329805) Homepage Journal

    Browsers
    Chrome: 0***
    IE8: 1**
    Firefox: 1(1)*
    Safari: 2(1)*

    Mobile Browsers
    Android: 0
    iPhone: 0
    Nokia/Symbian: 0
    Windows Mobile: 0
    Blackberry: 0****

    *Numbers in parenthesis indicate Successful exploits that fell outside the contest criteria and therefore could not be rewarded.
    **Exploit Confirmed by MS
    ***Chrome was impacted by one of the flaws, although exploit was not possible using any current known techniques.
    ****The Blackberry was attempted and resulted in "Something Interesting", but not an exploit.

  • The guys are holding out for "maximum market value" for their talent.

    "Vulnerabilities have a market value so it makes no sense to work hard to find a bug, write an exploit and then give it away." - Charlie Miller

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

Working...