Linux is last man standing in Vista/Linux/Mac hacking contest

Vancouver (WA) - Over the weekend, a hacker managed to exploit a vulnerability in the Windows Vista Flash player, as part of the CanSecWest’s "Pwn2Own" contest. The competition pitted a Windows, Apple and Linux computer side-by-side to see which would crack first.

The Apple notebook, a Macbook Air, was the first to fall in just two hours after the contest started.

Shane Macaulay was able to fully compromise a notebook running Windows Vista about a day later. He managed to break the computer’s safeguards by exploiting a hole in the way the PC read Flash code.

Now the only computer left standing is a notebook containing the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

As with the Safari Web browser vulnerability discovered to take down the Apple notebook, the Flash problem with Vista will be reported to Microsoft before the details are released to anyone else.