Yesterday, at the CanSecWest security conference, IPhone hacker Charlie Miller managed to successfully hijack a MacBook Air laptop in only 2 minutes. The prizes offered by show organizers included a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and the MacBook.

During the first day of the contest, nobody was able to hack into the systems, as contestants were only allowed an over-the-network approach on computers; on the second day however, rules were modified a bit, and attacks could also be employed through specially designed websites or e-mails. Hackers were allowed to target "default installed client-side applications" as well, such as browsers.

The winner was able to gain access to the MacBook Air and retrieve the designated file after judges were tricked into visiting a “trap-website.” As stipulated in the contest’s rules, the winner signed a nondisclosure agreement immediately after the contest, so that the system’s vulnerability could not be made public.

The winner, Charlie Miller, gets to keep the laptop and $10,000. The MacBook Air laptop is less than 2 centimeters thick, features a backlit 13-inch (33-centimetre) screen, a full-size keyboard and a pad responsive to Apple's multi-touch control gestures. It weighs less than 1.5 kilograms. The laptop is powered by Intel's 1.6 GHZ Core 2 Duo processor as standard, with an available 1.8GHZ upgrade. It has 2 GB of RAM, battery life of 5 hours and an 80 GB hard drive.