Posts Tagged ‘hackers’

The Pwn2Own hacking competition is going to prove bad for Apple Safari web browser because the experts believe that this browser has got maximum number of security loopholes. The Safari browser is likely to be hacked multiple times at the contest. This is because it’s a user friendly web browser and supports lots of formats and applications. So, the chances of bugs also increase.

Charlie Miller, the white-hat hacker who successfully cracked an Apple MacBook Air at the last year’s Pwn2Own competition believes that this time the Safari browser will be hacked by at least four hackers. The browser’s security features are so weak that anyone can easily remotely install malware on the handhelds running Safari. Therefore, Miller says that the safari will be the first to fall and he also says that the Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox will throw a real challenge in front of the contestants. Apart from Safari, Google Chrome is also supposed to be an easy target for hackers.

Miller said, “It’s (Safari) an easy target. Apple’s products are really friendly to users, and Safari is designed to handle anything, including all kinds of file formats. With a lot of functionality comes the increased chance of bugs. The more complex software is, the less secure it is.”

Once again the alarms are sounding with regards to Apple Safari’s security. Recently it has been found that the Safari’s RSS feeds are not safe to use, both on the Mac and PC. This application is vulnerable to hacker attacks and it can allow any malicious web site to bring you some really serious repercussions when using Safari to capture RSS feeds.

Once trapped by the malicious site the hackers can read files on your hard disk drive. This can lead to the access to sensitive information such as e-mails, passwords, cookies or any other private data. Even the whole user account can be taken in control by the intruders and the whole process is completely transparent to the user. The interesting fact is that this security loophole has been identified by Apple itself but it hasn’t been fixed till now. So it’s highly recommended not to use Safari for RSS.

The problem is believed to be emerged due to some issues with the Apple’s Webkit. This is because the OmniWeb users are also in the danger zone. OmniWeb is the browser used in Mac machines, like the Apple MacBook, and uses the WebKit rendering engine. RSS Feeds were introduced in Safari in 2004 but this is the first time that it has also joined the family of vulnerable applications.