Prepare to be Pwned! The annual Pwn2Own contest, which kicks off at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver this March, is looking for skilled hackers who can find vulnerabilities in smartphone operating systems, including Sybian, Android and Microsoft - just to name a few.
And if you're good enough to hack these phones, you'll be paid $10,000 for your skills. Not just that, but you'll also get to keep the phone you've hacked as a memento. This includes a 1 year subscription for the phone too.
In previous years, Pwn2Own won praise (and concern) for showing the exploits of the previously un-hackable: Mac OS X. Besides the obvious backslapping praise by their peers, there exists a good reason for a contest like this: security for the user. Most important, is the need to ward off any future phone viruses and malware that may secretly and mysteriously appear on the phone.
The exploits of popular smartphones come at a time when the phones are experiencing massive popularity and there remains a concern for phone users who could have their mobiles used in phishing and fraud scams without their knowledge.
According to a Computerworld report, the hacking vulnerabilities will be sponsored by TippingPoint, which operates the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) bug-bounty program. It reserves the right to purchase the rights to any code exploits discovered by the smartphone hackers at the conference.
ZDI then sells these bug exploits to the smartphone manufacturers in a kind of reverse engineering hacking trick. It worked well enough in the movie Sneakers, so we're willing to bet it can work pretty well outside Hollywood.
A second hacking contest will also be happening during the conference at the same time. It will pay an identical cash prize ($10 000) for successful hacks on the Windows and Mac OS X internet browsers, including Firefox, Chrome and Safari.