MacBook Air first to fall in hacking competition

The MacBook Air was the first laptop to fall in the CanSecWest hacking contest. Hacker Charlie Miller took home the MacBook Air and a $10,000 cash prize Thursday after breaking into the machine at the CanSecWest security conference's PWN 2 OWN hacking contest.

Conference organizers offered a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and MacBook Air (running Linux, Vista and Leopard) as prizes to anybody who could hack into them and read the contents of a file on the system using a previously undisclosed "0day" attack.

Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when exploits had to be performed over the network so on Thursday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could have the target notebooks do things like visit Web sites or open e-mail messages.

Within two minutes of the new rule's implementation Miller directed the contest's organizers to visit a Web site that contained his exploit code which then allowed him to seize control of the computer.

Details of the exploit are under non-disclosure until the contest's sponsor, TippingPoint, can notify Apple. However we do know that Miller must have exploited the Safari browser because contest rules require that contestants can only take advantage of software that is pre-installed on the Mac.

Look for another Security Update from Apple any day now. (Thanks Slashdot)