[LINK] "Chrome best, Safari worst"

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

This news item is all over the web today and just for a change
i thought i'd take a peek at it via a NZ newspaper. And actually
it looks quite an interesting paper, that is their website anyway.
Mind, it does seem to mention Aussie more than NZ, but that's ok :)

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Chrome beats the hackers in annual browser bash 

Mar 23, 2009  www.nzherald.co.nz  Pat Pilcher

The Pwn2Own competition, which is held every year to challenge hackers 
and security experts to find vulnerabilities in web browsers and mobile 
devices, has taken its usual share of victims with one surprise survivor 
during its first day.

Targeted browsers included Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla's 
Firefox, and Google's Chrome, running on a Sony Vaio notebook running 
Windows 7, as well as Safari and Firefox on a Macbook running OS X. 

After the first day of the Pwn2Own contest, Google's Chrome browser was 
the only browser left standing. 

Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer, however, all fell to hackers with 
Safari exploited in mere seconds.

So what makes Chrome so secure? 

Previous Pwn2Own champion Charlie Miller says that although he did find a 
security hole in Google's browser, he was unable to exploit it because of 
Chrome's browser's sandboxing feature (which is a security mechanism that 
keeps running code isolated using a tightly-controlled set of virtual 
resources) and Windows 7 security measures which combined to prevented 
him from exploiting any Chrome weaknesses.

Competition organisers purchase all winning vulnerabilities that are 
successfully used against browsers, handing them over to affected 
vendors, and coordinating full public disclosure to ensure all 
vulnerabilities are secured.

--

Cheers,
Stephen