26 February 2009, 15:31

Pwn2Own 2009: cash for mobile and browser holes

The security competition Pwn2Own 2009, formerly called PWN to OWN, will award a prize of $10,000 for each vulnerability found on various mobile phone platforms and internet browsers. According to the main sponsor TippingPoint Technologies, participants in the competition will target BlackBerry, Android, iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile.

The latest in browser security will also be put to the test, as participants will also attack vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 8, Firefox and Google Chrome on Windows 7 and Safari and Firefox on Mac OS X. Each functional exploit could net a prize of up to $5,000.

Pwn2Own will take place during the CanSecWest security conference between the 16th and the 20th of March in Vancouver, Canada. This will be the third time the competition has taken place. The competition attracted attention last year when the MacBook Air was the first to be compromised while running the, then current, Mac OS X 10.5.2 with all security patches applied.

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