Charlie Miller skipping Pwn2Own as new rules change hacking game
Charlie Miller won’t be defending his Pwn2Own hacking crown this year.
Miller, a Pwn2Own regular who makes headlines every year for his work breaking into fully patched Mac OS X machines, says he is skipping the contest this year because of the new rules that require on-the-spot writing of exploits.
When Pwn2Own kicks off at the CanSecWest security conference here, it will resemble a capture-the-flag (CTF) style competition instead of the random draw that allowed hackers to participate with ready-made vulnerabilities and exploits. “I understand why they switched, they wanted to remove the whole “random draw” from the equation, which I was a necessary move. Last year I had a Safari exploit that I didn’t get to use because the Vupen guys got their name drawn before me and I was pretty upset,” Miller said in an interview.