Free Republic

The eighteenth annual CanSecWest security conference is underway in downtown Vancouver, Canada, where researchers are competing in the 11th Pwn2Own computer hacking contest for over $2 million in prizes. Day one results have already been published over at the Zero Day Initiative website, with a couple of successful Mac-related exploits already appearing in the list of achievements. Image via Zero Day Initiative​ Samuel Groß of phoenhex returned to Pwn2Own to successfully hack Apple's desktop Safari browser. Groß used a JIT optimization bug in Safari, a macOS logic bug, and a kernel overwrite to execute code to successfully exploit the browser,...

The sixteenth annual CanSecWest security conference is underway in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, and researchers participating in the Pwn2Own computer hacking contest have already discovered multiple vulnerabilities in OS X and the Safari web browser on the desktop. On day one of the event, independent security researcher JungHoon Lee earned $60,000 after exploiting both OS X and Safari. Lee uncovered four vulnerabilities in total, including one exploit in Safari and three other vulnerabilities within the OS X operating system, according to security firm Trend Micro. JungHoon Lee (lokihardt): Demonstrated a successful code execution attack against Apple Safari to gain root...

CanSecWest wrapped up on Friday in Vancouver, and while there was a minor controversy over self-censorship of a talk said to be a “blueprint for terrorists”, the most watched part of the event once again proved to be the Pwn2Own hacking competition. Pwn2Own offered some serious cash incentives for teams to develop exploits for Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. During the competition no browser proved invulnerable, but Firefox had the most security shortcomings with four separate exploits being developed for Mozilla’s browser. In comparison Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari were all exploited only once... Historically Firefox has always been...