Fully patched OSX hacked within seconds of start of pen test contest

As much as I like Apple and OSX, I see some of the same kinds of mistakes Next/NeXT made with NextStep, being made with OSX.<p>(I used to sell Next software for about 6 months and got to use a NextStation every day. Very cool - later at another company I got to speak with the GUI designer Keith Ohlfs and personally thank him for the best copmuter experience I ever had.)<p>For instance, NextStep's POSIX interface was broken and thus, Next was not able to compete against the then-very-inferior SunOS in government contracts (because POSIX compliance was a requirement).<p>Instead, Next did win in CIA/NSA and other exempt contracts where the solution was considered to be "custom" and thus didn't have to follow the standards.<p>It probably would have taken a competent Next programmer a few weeks to fix the POSIX layer - but since POSIX was viewed as "dumb" it was never made a priority.<p>Apple is letting some of the boring stuff slip - which is a danger sign. Programmers at Apple can't all be programming the cool CoverFlow stuff and ignoring the "guts".

I find the title highly sensational and misleading. Of course it was hacked in seconds given a prepared exploit, I would be shocked if it took the computer longer than that to execute the exploit code.

Yup, I'm at CanSecWest now. This doesn't say much except that he just brought a ready, armed exploit and just took the prize. Nils' breaking of the browser trifecta was quite impressive though.

Bringing a pre-made exploit to a contest like this kind of dodges the point of the competition.<p>Maybe an exploit contest could be started after each browser revision, where winning submissions must be exploiting a bug introduced by that version of the software.

This is frustrating for me. I've become <i>very</i> accustomed to the speed and interface of Safari, but the security-conscious part of me says the only rational response to this article is to stop using Safari for general surfing and switch to Firefox, which seems to be lacking any major crash holes right now.<p>But every time I fire up Firefox my entire body cringes at the sluggishness. For many Mac users, myself included, this is going to be a real test of discipline.

Are there more details available? Like which version of Safari was hacked?