Macbook Air Gets Hacked

There are team of security researchers that has won $10,000 for hacking a MacBook Air for as short as 2 minutes that has used a undisclosed Safari vulnerability.

It was in lovely Vancouver, Canada where IDG News Service had camped out at CanSec West and had started to witness the exploits ( you have got to love this kind of challenge) of Charlie Miller, Jake Honoroff and Mark Daniel of Independent Security Evaluators during the Pwn to Own contest that had been sponsored by TippingPoint. The team was able to take control hacking MacBook Air on the second day of the challenge in a hacking competition, which pitted the Air in comparison with Windows Vista and Ubuntu Machines.

The first day was on a Wednesday when no one was able to execute code on any system, it was a time when hacks were limited to over the network techniques with the operating systems themselves. However on the second day. the rules changed when they were allowed to tricking someone to visit a maliciously crafted website, or open an email of some sort. Hackers were also allowed to use and target “default installed client-side applications,” such as browsers for that matter.

The team was already ready with attack codes in the Web site, that enabled them to gain access with the MacBook Air and retrieve files from there as judges were tricked to go to the website. According to the TippingPoint DVLabs blog, that this is a new discovery of vulnerability in Safari that was used to gain control over the Macbook Air.

The contest rules predetermined that winner would quickly sign in a nondisclosure agreement relating to their technique, so the vulnerability would be settled with the vendor, and TippingPoint had said that Apple had been tipped about the vulnerability.

Last year’s contest was won by exploiting a QuickTime vulnerability which had been fixed by Apple in less than two weeks. Upto now, no one has gained control over Vista or Ubuntu machines, however upates will be made soon regarding this matter.