The contest is ongoing as we speak, with the likes of the iPhone and Windows Phone 7 operating systems set to be put to the test by cunning hackers, but the headlines so far is all about Apple’s Safari browser, Microsoft’s IE8 browser and Google Chrome.

In what’s sure to be an embarrassment to Apple, it has been confirmed that French security company Vupen managed to completely expose Safari 5 running on a MacBook Air notebook in a mere five seconds. To prove the hack had been successful, the team installed a calculator application and then wrote a file to demonstrate that Mac OS X had been opened up, according to Zdnet.

Elsewhere, IE8 was also the victim of a planned attack, as researcher Stephen Fewer managed to use three vulnerabilities to take down IE8 completely, and even get out of protected mode successfully.

But the victory went to Google it seems, as Chrome remains unhacked due to participants failing to show up at the event, likely due to Google issuing a patch update to the software, despite Google themselves offering a bounty of $20,000 USD – as reported from Computer World.

As we mentioned earlier, iOS, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry OS is next on the agenda, so stay tuned to see if teams will be able to hack into those systems or not during the event. Let us know your thoughts on the results so far.

Are you surprised that Safari was exposed in a matter of seconds?

According to V3, the fixes come after Mozilla established that these vulnerabilities could potentially open up the browser and use it to attack other workstations by taking remote control of the targeted system and executing code to disable it.

Such vulnerabilities will be scoped out by contestants taking part in the Pwn2Own hacking contest which is part of the CanSecWest Security Conference that runs from the 9th to the 11th of March.

The Pwn2Own hacking contest, starting in 2007, is an annual event which security ‘researchers’ use browsers and systems such as Mozilla’s to find harmful exploits. Each successful exploit or hack will result in the winner or exploit finder receiving the device or computer that was exploited as well as a cash prize. Vulnerabilities are not made public until the vendor has resolved the issue found by the researcher. More information can be found via the Wikipedia page.

Rules for this years contest are now up on the official CanSecWest website which list a certain amount of strict guidelines that should be followed, as well as some potential targets that contestants could find vulnerabilities in. More details can be found on the CanSecWest website.

Sponsored by TippingPoint, the event is held at the CanSecWest security conference and has been going since 2007. Challengers are set the task of trying to hack software, specifically anything web based including the browser. This year they will try and take down Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. If they are successful they get a lot of cash as well as getting to keep the device.

As Google Chrome has managed to avoid exploitation the last two years, they have decided to up the ante this year, with contestants normally only offered $10000, they now get the chance to earn double. This is the most offered since the competition began and not the first time they have raised the reward. Read more about this in the article over at Computerworld.

The contest starts March 9th and finishes on the 11th if any of you are interested in taking part.

Do you think Chrome can be hacked? Let us know your thoughts.

The article comes from Zdnet, who explains how a 26-year-old German hacker known as Nils, managed to use various ‘methods’ on Firefox to bypass the key Address Space Layout Randomization (ALSR) and Data Execution Prevention (DEP) securities with Microsoft’s Windows 7 software.

The contest rules state that he wasn’t allowed to explain how he exploited Firefox, so we will never know the full details.

What this has done though, is surely give a severe wake up call to Mozilla and Microsoft, on the sheer ease of how this operation was performed.

Let us know your thoughts on this, full details through the link.