Ubuntu last laptop standing in hacking contest

 

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Posted on 31 Mar 2008 at 08:24

An Ubuntu machine was the sole survivor of a hacking contest designed to find undiscovered flaws in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

The competition at the CanSecWest security conference pitted hackers against three laptops running Vista Ultimate SP1, Leopard OS X 10.5.2 and Ubuntu 7.10 to discover which was the most vulnerable.

The Leopard machine fell first, just two minutes into the second day of competition which allowed hackers to target applications installed on the operating systems.

Apple's MacBook Air was let down by a flaw in Safari, when security researcher Charlie Miller used a technique similar to a phishing attack to give him remote access to the machine.

On the third day of competition, hackers were allowed to target any "popular" piece of software that runs on the remaining machines. Adobe's Flash proved to be Vista's downfall, as hacker Shane Macaulay discovered a zero-day exploit in the software.

Adobe has been notified of the flaw, while Macaulay gets to keep the Fujitsu laptop running Vista Ultimate SP1 that he managed to break in to, and a $5,000 prize.

The Ubuntu Linux machine was the only one to make it through three days of competition unharmed. Although Macaulay is reported to have claimed that his Flash exploit could be tweaked to target any of the three operating systems within a matter of hours.

Author: Barry Collins