All three major Web browsers — Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari — failed to survive the hacker onslaught at this year’s CanSecWest Pwn2Own contest.
A security researcher named “Nils” (he declined to provide his full name) performed a clean drive-by download attack against the world’s most widely used browser to take full control of a Sony Vaio machine running Windows 7. He also scored hits against Firefox and Safari.
Charlie Miller also performed a successful drive-by exploit against Safari to win a new MacBook machine.
ALSO SEE: Pwn2Own 2009: Safari/MacBook falls in seconds [zdnet.com] and this Techmeme discussion.