Contest organizers this year increased sixfold the prizes given out for successful zero-day browser exploits during the CanSecWest security conference, but wound up with just one more exploit to show for it.

VANCOUVER -- Dueling browser-exploit contests at the CanSecWest conference yielded immediate results -- two hacks against Google Chrome -- with contestants in both competitions demonstrating exploits within an hour of the contests' opening.

Apple today patched a critical Mac OS X vulnerability used by a security researcher three weeks ago to win $10,000 for hacking Safari at the Pwn2Own contest.

Microsoft uncovered more than 1,800 bugs in Office 2010 by tapping into the unused computing horsepower of idling PCs, a company security engineer said today.

A delayed flight didn't stop Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf Weinmann from scoring a cool US$15,000, a brand-new iPhone and a trip to Las Vegas at the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest in Vancouver on Wednesday.

Google has patched 11 vulnerabilities in the Windows version of Chrome, including one that earned its finder the first $1,337 check from the company's new bug bounty program.

Mozilla yesterday confirmed a critical vulnerability in the newest version of Firefox, and said it would plug the hole by the end of the month.

Apple yesterday patched 46 security vulnerabilities, half of them in the Safari browser and its WebKit rendering engine, for the iPhone and iPod Touch as it released iPhone OS 3.0.