360Vulcan Team Brought Down IE Browser in Pwn2Own Hacking Contest

VANCOUVER, March 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- 360Vulcan Team, an Internet security research team from China, "broke" Microsoft's IE11 browser in only 17 seconds at the 2015 Pwn2Own hacking contest in Vancouver, Canada. This is the first Asian team to "break" IE browser in this contest. Microsoft's IE11 is the highest protected level so far in the Pwn2Own contest (based on the new rules).  

Compared with the previous contests, the level of difficulty of breaking IE11 in the Pwn2Own contest is unprecedented.  Combine that with a reduced in reward, and the French hacker team VUPEN dropped out. The difficulty of "breaking" IE11 has met the requirements of "unicorn". Teams need to successfully "break" IE11 browser, which is protected with enhanced sandbox, full 64-bit process, Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET), Win 8.1 security mechanism and other premier protection by exploiting IE vulnerabilities. At Pwn2Own 2014, no hacker team won the "unicorn" prize when it was first presented. 

Pwn2Own is a globally recognized hacking contest. Participants can choose from IE, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers or Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader plug-ins as their targets. Chrome and IE are the most challenging two products with excellent prizes, while the award for the most frequently breached - Firefox is only $30,000.

"IE is a popular application software in China, also a challenging attack project in this contest. We hope to prove that there will be endless between offensive and defensive. Only with constant innovations and improvement can we find the best security solutions," MJ0011, the leader of 360Vulcan Team said. 

360Vulcan Team is from 360 Safeguard offensive and defensive research team, and mainly works on digging security vulnerabilities and vulnerability threats, while helping vendors fix vulnerabilities and improving security products. 360Vulcan Team is capable of designing and providing more effective security solutions through experience in vulnerability research. 360 Safeguard launched the "XP Shield" a vulnerability defense product, the core technology of which is designed and developed by the 360Vulcan Team.

Since 2009, 360 has received 68 official acknowledgements from Microsoft due to reporting security flaws, ranking first among the global security software vendors that help Microsoft fix these flaws. 360Vulcan have also found and reported security flaws to Microsoft in this Pwn2Own contest for further improvement.

For more information please contact:

Liang Yu
Tel：+1-669-224-4691
Mobile: +1-347-574-1889
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd

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