How Secure is Your Browser? Pwn2Own 2011

  For those of you not in the know, there are plenty of internet browsers out there to choose from. The most popular and widely used is by far Internet Explorer. However, it's not from it's effectiveness or its ability. It is the most popular because many users just want a computer than can get online. For them, that's any Windows machine. For that machine, it's most likely IE (shorthand for Internet Explorer, which will be used when referring to this browser for the remainder of this article).  So with that being said, mister mister, what exactly are you talking about? Well I'll tell you. For the past five years a contest has been run to offer money/prizes to development teams that can successfully compromise internet browsers that you and I use every single day. Well, mister mister, why is that important, to give hackers a pat on the back for their illegal activities? Well, lets start at the beginning. The contest is called Pwn2Own. Second, these aren't "hackers" so to speak, or at least hackers that you think of (mister mister illegal activites) but genuine IT professionals who donate their time and energy to find exploits in current software and report those exploits back to the software developers for patches or other fixes. This competition is an opportunity for these people to show off their unique skills in software exploitation and provide software developers the necessary information (on a somewhat large scale) to fix the problems that exist.
  So enough of that, let's take a look at what exactly happened at this year's Pwn2Own competition.
  For the Apple users, Safari was the quickest to go down. 5 seconds. For their efforts, VUPEN, a penetration copmany based in France, won the $15,000 dollar prize in addition to the 13" MacBook Air on which the exploit was demonstrated.
  So what, I'm not a Mac user, and I definitly don't use Safari. Well then, next up was IE 8. A Sony Vaio running a 64-bit version of Windows (SP1) got popped as well, earning Mr. Stephen Fewer (Irish security researcher) $15,000 as well as the Sony Vaio.
  So the article states that that Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox both got through the competition unscathed. No bugs or hacks to report. Not to say that they aren't there, but in the days leading up to the challenge both Google and Mozilla spent a fair amount of time finding and exterminating the bugs in their programming. However, it should also be noted that the two teams were scheduled to make an attempt to take out Chrome. One didn't show up and the other decided to spend more time on the Mobile part of this competition.
  So what does this mean to you, the average user. Well, first and foremost I have always advocated the use of Firefox, Chrome, or even Opera (not listed in the competition for it lack of popularity). However, if you are a little hesitant to move to something completely unknown, there is some good news (especially if you are an IE user). Microsoft has assured that the bugs that were present in IE8 are not present in IE9. Link for assuredness.
  So what can we deduce from this? Is Chrome better than everything else? Well, by default, and in the eyes of the competition, yes. However, as most will tell you, a competition is just that, a competition. Google Chrome was never made an attempt on. There are some things that we can say, for absolute certainty, however.
  When it comes to software, regardless of who's software it is, you must stay up to date. As you can tell, many of these companies are quickly making changes to it's software and offering updates and bug fixes relatively quickly. Second off, as far as security goes, making sure you have valid and up to date virus/malware software running can help secure you while you are out watering your crops or checking your email. Above all, stay informed. This one is extremely hard in the everchanging landscape that is IT security. I guess that's what IT professionals, and me, are here for.
  Want to try out a new browser? Try these one of these:
    Google Chrome
    Mozilla Firefox
    Opera
    Internet Explorer (version 9)
  If you would like to check out the original article please go here. There is plenty of more information to be had if you google Pwn2Own 2011
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