Safari cracked in seconds, MacBook completely taken over in security contest

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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!!”