Posted on 03/29/2008 6:16:24 AM PDT by militem
The MacBook Air went first; a tiny Fujitsu laptop running Vista was hacked on the last day of the contest; but it was Linux, running on a Sony Vaio, that remained undefeated as conference organizers ended a three-way computer hacking challenge Friday at the CanSecWest conference.
Earlier this week, contest sponsors had put three laptops up for grabs to anyone who could hack into one of the systems and run their own software. A US$20,000 cash prize sweetened the deal, but the payout was halved each day as contest rules were relaxed and it became easier to penetrate the computers.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
ping
Does this surprise anyone? No real computer geek would have expected anything else.
I’m suprised it took that long to break Vista.
What's telling though is, that they relaxed security towards the end, and Linux still remained untouched.
Why?
You keep what you “hack”. I guess nobody wanted the linux computer.
Yeah, a Vaio’s not great. Not surprised the Mac Air went first.
Really? I'm not a Mac person. I work almost exclusively on HP ProLiant-class server hardware, but I know that the Mac adherents among my ilk were certain that the Mac would remain unscathed.
I was actually considering a MBP until I read this. Not to say that Mac isn't a more stable platform, but it appears that stability doesn't always equate to security.
Thanks for posting this!
Riiight. Instead they wanted the two computers with the OS'es that they had just pansed.
Actually if you read about what happened no one could actually "hack" the Mac. They all failed that part and instead had the user specifically click a link, download software, and then execute it.
This is a "hack" in the same way as leaving a piece of paper by a computer that reads"take hammer, smash computer" is a "hack".
But doing that allowed them to keep the computer they "hacked", the Mac being the most valuable. Why even bother with the others?
I did read the article, and others. This particular article was a bit lighter on the details than another I read. However neither said that the user had to willfully execute software. It appears instead that the user had only to click a link, not exactly the hardest thing to get someone to do, ie:
The Mac was hacked through the Safari browser, but I know they just came out with a whole new version, and the older version was reputedly long in the tooth and had vulnerabilities.
Still, that Linux fared so well really is the story here, I think. I would have bet on the Mac outlasting it.
LOL... Hey, I was cheated! Where’d you put the girls?
That's far better than I expected of Vista, and a bit worse than I would have guessed for the Mac. I am not surprised about the Linux machine being impervious --- but I would not have been surprised if Linux had been the first compromised since its openness is both an advantage and a liability.
You keep what you “hack”. I guess nobody wanted the linux computer.
I would think that a Macbook Air would be the most attractive of the three units, and it went down first as your theory would suggest.But the guy who pwned the Vista box said he attacked that instead of the Mac because he knew more about Vista, but he claimed that he thought the Mac would be more hackable.
The Vista would have been cracked first, but it kept on crashing. :)
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