MacBook Air hacked in ‘two minutes’
The MacBook Air was the first computer to fail in a hacking contest between laptops made by Apple, Windows and Linux at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Charlie Miller, the participant who was able to hack into the MacBook in two mintues, won $10,000 plus the MacBook laptop that he successfully hacked.
No one was able to hack into any of the machines through the network on the first day of the contest, however, yet Mr Miller was able to do so once the event’s organisers allowed the hackers to direct human operators from the three machines to visit websites and open emails.
While details of the hack are not being made public, experts are assuming that the vulnerability must be within Apple’s Safari browser because Mr Miller was only able to use software preinstalled on the Mac laptop.
Rich Mogull, the new security writer at Tidbits wrote: “Although we need to take contests like these with a grain of salt, we can’t dismiss the results. Since it took Mr Miller only two minutes to compromise the MacBook Air, it’s clear that he walked in the door with a complete exploit ready to go.”
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