All three “big” Web browsers—Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari—were cracked like nobody’s business at the Pwn2Own contest. Safari was cracked first, within a few seconds, actually, while the other two took a little while longer to crack. And by “crack” we mean remotely exploit the browser, then use said browser to take over full control of the computer.
Now, the guys in the competition aren’t the type of people you need to be worried about; they’re in the competition to promote security awareness, and win a free laptop in the process, maybe. These aren’t the guys who’ll be sitting in a coffee shop, sniffing the Wi-Fi network for your personal data, in other words.
Where do we go from here? The guy who cracked Safari, one Charlie Miller (he did the same thing last year), will work with the Zero Day Initiative and Apple to help the company patch the holes in its browser.
And now we wait for the CNNs and Fox Newses of the world to be all, “YOUR LAPTOP IS IN DANGER!!”
Interesting topic. There is a great deal of information here http://www.justaskgemalto.com/en/surfing about digital security online that I think might be insightful to this conversation.
YOUR LAPTOP IS IN DANGER!!
Fortunately I use Opera. lol
I have gone to linux and mac osx because of security and even though safari is cracked, will it be exploited like windows. I will start to use alternate linux and mac browsers if I get hit by these jerks. It is really nice to be able to go to questionable websites and have information popup that says, linux doesn’t know what to do with this program, (that is trying to hijack the machine).