On the first day, contestants were only allowed to attack the machines over the network. The second day, Thursday, allowed hackers to command contest officials to do small speccific tasks, and this is when Miller soared. He asked officials to visit a specific site, giving him near instant control of the MacBook Air through a Safari exploit.
It’s likely the reason the Mac was hacked first is because it may have been the most sought after prize. After all, it is a free MacBook Air. Despite the machine’s allure, the Vaio and Fujitsu would make great second-place prizes, but the hackers were unable to breach Linux and Vista — yes, the remixed Windows XP mess that is known as Vista held its ground on the second day. Vista didn’t even budge as Shane Macauley, one of last year’s winners, spent a good chunk of Thurday trying to crack it
Maybe it's just me but a hacker being able to read my files is a pretty big deal...all for just visiting a website. So if that website is run by one of those "inferior" non Mac OS's that may actually be harder to crack, but none-the-less inferior and had been eploited that hacker could then own the data on your OS X machine. Not good.
That was one of the most surprising aspects of this years contest., and is actually a really promising sign. It probably won't happen, but I'd love to see a year go by with no successful hacks. I think it's great that all three major OSs had no non-user-initiated remote exploits. That's good for the vendors, and good for the users as well.