Hacker gets $10000 prize from the hacked

A hacker managed to break into a Mac and win a $10,000 prize as part of a contest started at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver.

In winning the contest, he exposed a hole in Safari, Apple Inc.'s browser. "Currently, every copy of OS X out there now is vulnerable to this," said Sean Comeau, one of the organizers of CanSecWest.

The conference organizers decided to offer the contest in part to draw attention to possible security shortcomings in Macs. "You see a lot of people running OS X saying it's so secure and frankly Microsoft is putting more work into security than Apple has," said Dragos Ruiu, the principal organizer of security conferences including CanSecWest

Initially, contestants were invited to try to access one of two Macs through a wireless access point while the Macs had no programs running. No attackers managed to do so, and so conference organizers allowed participants to try to get in through the browser by sending URLs via e-mail.

Dino Dai Zovi, who lives in New York, sent along a URL that exposed the hole. Since the contest was only open to attendees in Vancouver, he sent it to a friend who was at the conference and forwarded it on.

The URL opened a blank page but exposed a vulnerability in input handling in Safari, Comeau said. An attacker could use the vulnerability in a number of ways, but Dai Zovi used it to open a back door that gave him access to anything on the computer, Comeau said.

The vulnerability won't be published. 3Com Corp.'s Tipping Point division, which put up the cash prize, will handle disclosing it to Apple.

The prize for the contest was originally one of the Macs. But on Thursday evening, TippingPoint put up the cash award, which may have spurred a wider interest in the contest.

One reason Macs haven't been much of a target for hackers is that there are fewer to attack, said Terri Forslof, manager of security response for TippingPoint. "It's an incentive issue. The Mac is not as widely deployed of a platform as say Windows," she said. In this case, the cash may have provided motivation.

The contest was a chance for hackers to demonstrate techniques they may have boasted about. "I hear a lot of people bragging about how easy it is to break into Macs," Ruiu said.

Some attendees didn't think it was a coincidence that on late Thursday Apple released a patch for 25 vulnerabilities in OS X.

Macs haven't been targets for hackers and malicious code writers nearly to the degree that Windows machines have historically. That's in part because there are fewer Macs in use, thus making the potential impact of malicious code smaller than on the more widely used PCs.

Also, Apple is "extremely litigious when people do find stuff," noted Theo de Raadt, OpenBSD project leader and an attendee at the conference. He suspects that will backfire on Apple, which could begin to "look evil" if hackers begin to publish potentially threatening letters from the company.

What is Plasma and What is LCD,Their Difference

Outward appearances are definitely deceiving when it comes to LCD and Plasma televisions. Although both types of televisions are flat and thin, they employ different technology in an attempt to deliver similar results.

Plasma TV Overview

Plasma television technology is based loosely on the fluorescent light bulb. The display itself consists of cells. Within each cell two glass panels are separated by a narrow gap in which neon-xenon gas is injected and sealed in plasma form during the manufacturing process. The gas is electrically charged at specific intervals when the Plasma set is in use. The charged gas then strikes red, green, and blue phosphors, thus creating a television image. Each group of red, green, and blue phosphors is called a pixel (picture element).

Although Plasma television technology eliminate the need for the bulky picture tube and electron beam scanning of traditional televisions, because it still employs the burning of phosphors to generate an image, Plasma televisions still suffer from some of the drawbacks of traditional televisions, such as heat generation and screen-burn of static images.

LCD TV Overview

LCD televisions, on the other hand, use a different technology (see also question #1 for this same explanation).

Basically, LCD panels are made of two layers of transparent material, which are polarized, and are "glued" together. One of the layers is coated with a special polymer that holds the individual liquid crystals. Current is then passed through individual crystals, which allow the crystals to pass or block light to create images. LCD crystals do not produce their own light, so an external light source, such as florescent bulb is needed for the image created by the LCD to become visible to the viewer.

Unlike standard CRT and Plasma televisions, since there are no phosphors that light up, less power is need for operation and the light source in an LCD television generates less heat than a Plasma or traditional television. Also, because of the nature of LCD technology, there is no radiation emitted from the screen itself.

Plasma vs LCD

The ADVANTAGES of Plasma over LCD are:

1. Larger screen size availability.

2. Better contrast ratio and ability to render deeper blacks.

3. Better color accuracy and saturation.

4. Better motion tracking (little or no motion lag in fast moving images).

The DISADVANTAGES of Plasma vs LCD include:

1. Plasma TVs are more susceptible to burn-in of static images.

2. Plasma TVs generate more heat than LCDs, due to the need to light of phosphors to create the images.

3. Does not perform as well at higher altitudes.

4. Shorter display life span (about 30,000 hours or 8 hrs of viewing a day for 9 years) than LCD. However, screen life span is improving to as high as 60,000 hours. due to technology improvements.

LCD television ADVANTAGES over Plasma include:

1. No burn-in of static images.

2. Cooler running temperature.

3. No high altitude use issues.

4. Increased image brightness over Plasma.

5. Longer display life (about 60,000 hours - at which time all you may need to do is replace the light source, not the entire set). This can vary according other environmental and use factors.

6. Lighter weight (when comparing same screen sizeds) than Plasma counterparts.

DISADVANTAGES of LCD vs Plasma televisions include:

1. Lower contrast ratio, not as good rendering deep blacks.

2. Not as good at tracking motion (fast moving objects may exhibit lag artifacts) - However, this is improving.

3. Not as common in large screen sizes above 42-inches (although the number is growing).

4. Although LCD televisions do not suffer from burn-in susceptibility, it is possible that individual pixels on an LCD televisions can burn out, causing small, visible, black or white dots to appear on the screen. Individual pixels cannot be repaired, the whole screen would need to be replaced at that point, if the individual pixel burnout becomes annoying to you.

5. LCD televisions are typically more expensive than equivalent-sized Plasma televisions, especially when comparing EDTV Plasmas to HDTV-LCD Televisions.

The LG Time Machine TV

LG Electronics has announced the launch of the Time Machine TV in the country, which aims at making TV viewing much more intelligent than before. This new product of the manufacturer is targeted at tech-savvy individuals.

According to LG, Time Machine TVs are the world s first television-sets to be equipped with a built-in digital video recorder, which enables the user to pause, rewind and replay live TV programs as per convenience after the original broadcast.

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Intel Core™2 Duo Processor

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