Even a Mac can be hacked.This was proven Friday by Shane Macaulay who managed to break into a Mac in a contest at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver.
Macaulay, a software engineer, got help from his friend Dino Di Zovie, a security researcher, found a hole in the Mac browser Safari which could be exploited to allow remote unauthorized entry and gain full control of the computer.
For his efforts, Macaulay won $10,000 in the contest dubbed “PWN to OWN”. Initially, the organizers of the conference offered to give a way a Mac to anyone who could break into the computer using a wireless access point while the computer was not running any program.
When nobody was successful on the first day of the contest, the contestants decide to away the cash prize and relaxed the rules to allow participants to try go through the browser.
Di Zovie, who had been earlier credited by Apple for finding flaws in the Mac, sent instructions to his friend Macaulay who was attending the conference. Only conference attendees were allowed to join the contest.
The organizers said the exploit used to hack into the Mac would not be published for the public. The information will be given to Apple so they could fix the flaw before anyone else could exploit it.
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