Firefox looks to beat Microsoft and Apple in PWN2OWN contest

Mozilla Corps Firefox looks as if they have beaten both Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) in the PWN2OWN contest. Firefox is the first browser to patch a critical vulnerability used a week ago, and they look like they will be winning a $5,000 in a hacking contest.

Computer World explains that the PWN2OWN competition took place last Thursday, while there a student from Germany, Nils cracked a Sony laptop running on Microsoft’s new Windows 7, he did this by exploiting a previously unknown bug in the new Internet Explorer 8. Nils was hungry for more and hacked both Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox; both browsers were running on a MacBook.

Nils was paid $5,000 for each successful exploit, which meant that he walked away with $15,000 from the contest sponsor 3Com Corp.’s. Lucas Adamski, Mozilla’s director of security engineering has now said that Firefox will now patch a critical vulnerability that had been disclosed to them at the PWN2OWN competition.

The fixes will be included in Firefox 3.0.8, which is due to be released by April 1.