Ubuntu Linux stands through hacking contest

By Janine de Blois

The CanSecWest contest in Vancouver has left only the Ubuntu Linux undefeated, though several attempts to crack it were made.

On the final day of the contest Shane Macaulay spent almost four hours attempting to use his exploit of a previously unknown flaw in Adobe Flash.

He alternated his attempts between Vista and Linux. Macaulay had neglected to install Service Pack 1 for Vista when testing the Flash exploit.

Page protections added by the update initially thwarted the exploit. With the assistance of Alex Stirov, security researcher at VMware they were able to get around the added Vista security.

Macaulay said, “We had to do some porting to get around that issue.” They used javascript to, “to render that protection ineffective.”

Macaulay, who is more familiar with the Vista system says with a few hours of tweaking, his exploit will also work on OS X and Linux.

Macaulay and Sotirov have autographed the Fujitsu U810 laptop won in the contest and it will probably be auctioned of on eBay.