Hackers took down Apple 's iPhone and Safari browser, Microsoft 's Internet Explore 8 (IE8) and Mozilla's Firefox within minutes at today's Pwn2Own contest, as expected. The two-man team of Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann exploited the iPhone in under five minutes, said a spokeswoman for 3Com TippingPoint, the security company that sponsored the contest. The pair also walked away with $15,000 in cash, a record prize for the challenge, which is in its fourth year.
Iozzo, an Italian college student, works for Zynamics GmbH, the company headed by noted researcher Thomas Dullien, better known as Halvar Flake, while Weinmann is a post-doctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Algorithms, Cryptology and Security at the University of Luxembourg.

Weinmann is probably best known for being part of a three-man team that in 2007 demonstrated how to crack the Wi-Fi security protocol WEP much faster than previously thought possible.

The link for this article located at Network World is no longer available.