Fun & Frivolity: Hacking And Beauty

To cap off this week, I've got two fun things for you. First is a special, heartfelt shout-out to all Mac lovers out there. One of the most common things that Mac-addicts say about why they love Macs is because they've never had any problems with viruses, and that must mean that Macs are really, really secure. Ahem:

Charlie Miller, a security researcher who hacked a Macintosh in two minutes last year at CanSecWest's PWN2OWN contest, improved his time today by breaking into another Macintosh in under 10 seconds.

Miller, an analyst at Independent Security Evaluators in Baltimore, walked off with a $5,000 cash prize and the MacBook he hacked.

"I can't talk about the details of the vulnerability, but it was a Mac, fully patched, with Safari, fully patched," said Miller on Wednesday, not long after he had won the prize. "It probably took five or 10 seconds." He confirmed that he had researched and written the exploit before he arrived at the challenge.

Sorry, Mac lovers...it's not so much a case of a Mac's superior security, but the fact that there are relatively so few Macs on the market -- and that they are generally in inconsequential positions -- that it's simply not worth a hacker's time to even consider them. Irrelevance has gotta' sting...!

Finally, to get everyone on a weekend-loving warm fuzzy, here's a terrific video about America the Beautiful:

Words do mean things, don't they? Awesome stuff. We are truly blessed to live in America!

Have a great weekend!