Famed hacking contest gets facelift

The high-profile “Pwn2Own” annual hacking competition has become more competitive because sponsor HP/TippingPoint DVLabs has revamped the prestigious contest by upping the potential purse.

Unlike years past, it won’t be a race to zero-day vulnerability. There are four targets in this year’s contest, and they are all browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari. The teams will have few specific challenges along the way, and first-, second-, and third-place prizes totaling $105,000 for the three winning contestants or teams. Google is also offering a side bounty of two prizes for full ($20,000) and partial ($10,000) hacks of Chrome. There will be another new element for the contestants to crack: patched vulnerabilities which have holes. The contesting teams will have three days to find a way to exploit hole in the patched vulnerabilities. Mobile hacking is off of the agenda this year. As before, all affected vendors in the contest will get reports on any newly discovered vulnerability, and the winners will get shiny new laptops in addition to their cash prizes. Original news can be read at DarkReading web site.