Pwn2Own is a hacking contest which in previous years demanded OS exploits on day one, allowed browser vectors on day two (how OS X was compromised last year — thanks Safari!), and opened the floodgates with 3rd party bugware on day three. First person to successfully hack a machine won it as a prize, along with a nice cash bounty for their troubles.
This year, Ars Technica says Pwn2Own is doing something a little different: they’re bringing in the mobiles!
Apple’s iPhone is front and center on their target list, along with the Google Android G1, and devices from the BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Phone families. Pwn the mobile and you not only win it, but $10,000 to boot!
Not a lot of solid info on the rules yet, but we’ll keep a look out. Any white hats out there eager to try their luck?
We had sort of been expecting that the iPhone 3G would be more difficult to unlock because it would be impossible to walk out of a store without signing a contract and activating the iPhone. We all know how that worked out on launch day — iPhones were flying about unactivated anyway. Honestly, given that the 2.0 software has already been fully pwned (read: opened up, jailbroken, made to serve the whims of hackers everywhere), the early unlocking really should be no surprise.
Fernando writes in:
I just saw this today. A brazilian team seems to be the first one in the world to have a fully unlocked 3g iPhone. It’s using brazilian operator TIM, that does not support iPhones here in Brazil; actually the iPhone did not even start selling here, and when it does it will be Claro and maybe Vivo.
The video is in Portuguese, so it might not be clear exactly what’s happening to most readers. The method here, as Gizmodo notes, is
a special card that piggybacks to your SIM card, fooling the phone into thinking it’s using an official carrier. While this is not the software unlock being developed by the usual suspects, the video clearly shows that it works fine.
We know a lot of folks are waiting for a clear path to unlocking and jailbreaking to get the iPhone 3G — it looks like that wait isn’t going to be much longer than an Apple store line.
