Quote:The third and final day of the PWN to OWN contest at the CanSecWest security conference begins today, March 28th at 12:30pm local time (PST) in Vancouver.  Yesterday, on day two of the contest, the MacBook Air was successfully compromised first and won by a team from Independent Security Evaluators, also winning $10,000 from us (the Zero Day Initiative).

As of today, since the Vista and Ubuntu laptops are still standing unscathed, wee are now opening up the scope beyond just default installed applications on those laptops; any popular 3rd party application (as deemed "popular" by the judges) can now be installed on the laptops for a prize of $5,000 upon a successful compromise.  For a refresher on the full rules and cash prizes, check out the PWN to OWN contest guidelines.


2:30pm PST Update: Its been two hours so far, and both Vista and Ubuntu laptops are still standing. Stay tuned...

7:30pm PST Update - Vista Laptop was Won!: Congratulations to Shane Macaulay from Security Objectives - he has just won the Fujitsu U810 laptop running Vista Ultimate SP1 after it was installed with the latest version of Adobe Flash. Not only is he the official winner of the Fujitsu laptop, but also $5,000 from us. Shane received some assistance from his friends Derek Callaway (also from Security Objectives) and Alexander Sotirov. If you'll also remember, Shane Macaulay was Dino Dai Zovi's on-site team member at last year's PWN to OWN event in which they ultimately took the top prize.

The new Adobe Flash 0day vulnerability that Shane exploited has been acquired by the Zero Day Initiative, and has been responsibly disclosed to Adobe who is now working on the issue.  Until Adobe releases a patch for this issue, neither wee nor the contestants will be giving out any additional information about the vulnerability.  You will be able to track the vulnerability on the Zero Day Initiative upcoming advisories page.