Pwned! Safari Exploit Wins $10,000 Prize

Dai Zovi, who is not attending the conference, was recruited on Thursday night by Shane Macaulay, a friend and conference attendee. The ease Dai Zovi found in pwning the machine was all the more remarkable, given an update Apple pushed out yesterday patching 25 Mac security holes. Macaulay described Dai Zovi's vulnerability as a client-side javascript error that executed arbitrary code when Safari visited a booby-trapped website.

The pwn-2-own contest got off to a slow start on Thursday. The rules originally mandated an exploit that required no action on the part of the user. The reward for a successful hack was the machine that had been compromised. Conference attendees were underwhelmed, reasoning a Mac exploit that required no end-user interaction could be sold for upwards of $20,000. Things changed significantly on Day 2.

That's when Tipping Point upped the ante with its promise of a $10,000 bounty. Contest organizers also relaxed the rules so exploits could include malicious websites that attacked Safari. At the time of writing, a second MacBook Pro had successfully withstood attacks.