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Most Mac users enjoy the warmth of security that PC users only dream of having. I generally run anti-virus and anti-spyware at least once a week for my PC, and not once have I scanned anything for my Mac. There has been a glitch however in the MacBook Air’s security, which surprisingly didn’t last more than a couple of minutes against some “leet haxzorz” (couldn’t resist).

The threat itself is very minimal, as it took a group of security researchers to find the vulnerability. The weakness was found during a contest called, “Pwn to Own”, where security experts tested various machine’s security setups and try to exploit them. The glitch was actually found in the Safari program, and due to a non-disclosure agreement, has not been made available to the public.

Robert McMillan of the IDG News Service, reports on what happened during the competition, “Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network, but on Thursday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organizers using the computers to do things like visit Web sites or open e-mail messages”

The group of researchers, had tricked the judges into visiting a website that had malicious code written into it. Once the judges visited the website, the team was able to hack into the Macbook Air and take control of it in about two minutes. The team won $10,000 for their finding, and Tipping Point, the sponsors of the contest have notified Apple of the successful hack.

I think it’s safe to say that although the hackers were successful, there’s very little risk on the public front. Macs are still by and large the most safe of any of the computer hardware that’s out there right now. Let’s wait and see what the exploit is, and what Apple is going to do to remedy it before final judgements are made.

What do you all think of this finding, should it cause some concern, or is it going to be blown out of proportion?

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