In a recently held hacking competition called PWNFEST, a Chinese team successfully hacked into, and gained access to, the root of macOS Sierra.
Famous by the name of Pangu, this team is (in)famous for having created the most recent iOS jailbreaks. However, they needed some help breaking into Sierra, and another team — JH Hackers — marvellously stepped up to the occasion!
For their efforts, the two teams claimed the highest price money of $100,000 on offer. 9to5mac reports:
“No details [are out], but the team successfully claimed both the basic ($80k) and extra ($20k) rewards on offer in an exploit that took 20 seconds to run. There is no report yet of anyone successfully claiming the $180k available for an iOS 10/iPhone 7 Plus exploit.”
Apple wasn’t the only one on the receiving end of the hackers’ expertise:
- One group successfully gained access to the source code of Windows 10 using an exploit from Microsoft Edge running on the system.
- Google Pixel fell under the sword in less than 60 seconds! Achieving a “remote code execution” on the phone, a hacking team claimed $120,000 in rewards!
Of course, all the loopholes will be forwarded to the respective companies to be fixed so that real-life hackers don’t use it to exploit consumers. That’s the reasons hacking marathons like these — or hackathons, for short — are conducted. They help us find flaws in a controlled environment so that they can be fixed.
