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Mac Hack Contest Redux
narramissic writes "Remember the controversial Mac hacking contest from last year's CanSecWest conference? No? Here's a refresher: Conference organizers challenged attendees to hack into a Macintosh laptop, with the successful hacker winning the computer and a cash prize. Winner Dino Dai Zovi found a QuickTime bug that allowed him to run unauthorized software on the Mac once the computer's browser was directed to a specially crafted Web page. Well, the contest is back again this year, but with a twist, says Dragos Ruiu, the principal organizer of CanSecWest: 'We're thinking of having a contest where we have Vista and OS X and Linux ... and see which one goes first.""
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=508230
preview button, my computer does't have any preview button
We're thinking of having a contest where we have Vista and OS X and Linux ... and see which one goes first.
What I'd be most interested in is a survey of contestants as to their platform experience, and how focused they intend to be on attacking the different platforms. That part could be wildly unscientific, but could be interesting if everyone answers openly.
Couple that with some good logs of network activity, to see how focused attacks are on the various systems.
For example, it could turn out that nobody goes for the supposed low hanging fruit, and everyone tries to target the Mac...or an OpenBSD box, if they bring one. Etc.
Please help metamoderate.
I think this is an excellent point.
Default windows configuration is defaulted to... well, a very compatible set of options.
Not having actually done a Mac install, I don't know what the default is.
A default Linux partition, depending on the flavor, could be pretty minimal...
Here's what I think would make it more fair: make all the operating systems able to do the same things. Presumably, the normal Mac user, at some point, will want to opens a windows media file and an Office 2007 file. The typical Windows user will use quicktime at some point, and thus have it installed and have its possible security holes, too.
Otherwise, I could create a Linux distro that is THE safest operating system EVER... and just not let you do anything, no network connectivity, etc. Pretty safe! And useless.
Try this for giggles. Have a Vista machine. Send them an email with an exe file. Try and get them to execute it. Good luck. If you manage that, try the same exercise by MSN Messenger. At that point, even I am not sure I can do it without googling, and even then its tricky. Vista is a b**** when it comes to running EXEs received by email or MSN.