Chrome browser was a hard nut to crack for hacker contest participants

The other day the third annual event had finished that is named Pwn2Own. Remember that the main objective of this competition, in which the leading experts in the field of information security participate, is the discovery of vulnerabilities in the widespread software. The participants are proposed with their own hands to discover vulnerability and to demonstrate the possibilities of its operation. This time the role of “test animals” played new versions of popular web browsers installed in Windows and Mac laptops, and several mobile devices.
One of the main discoveries of Pwn2Own 2009 was the product Google Chrome, which has demonstrated a surprising resistance to cracking. Despite of the fact that the participants managed to detect vulnerability in the Google browser, they couldn`t use any of the currently known hacker techniques for operating this vulnerability. However, experts believe that it`s too early for Google to celebrate the victory, and think that the reason for such impregnability is a “young” age of the product. In their blog competition organizers indicate that the absolute majority of the vulnerabilities appear as soon as the first patch is released.
Hacker-volunteers were unable to cope with mobile versions of browsers. Although in this case, it is doubtful weather this can be considered as a merit of the developers.
According to experts, most portable devices with limited resources of memory and processor, can not boast of an effective protection against cracking. However, the operation of vulnerabilities in mobile software is still rather complex process with unpredictable results. In general, the organizers of Pwn2Own were satisfied with the results of the event. The participants of the event could detect four previously unknown vulnerabilities in popular web browsers Firefox and Safari. And Microsoft developers have demonstrated speed atypical for them, after the mysterious participant, known by the nickname Nils, has found a vulnerability in the new version of Internet Explorer 8 (which was released a few days ago) on first day of the competition. During 12 hours after the detection of the gap in the protection system of IE8, Microsoft Company has confirmed the vulnerability, carried out its reconstruction and reported a soon release of a special patch.
The competition took place within the sectoral CanSecWest Security Conference, which was held from 16 to 20 March in Vancouver, neowin.net reports.