Geohot is reportedly making an appearance at 5th annual Pwn2Own computer hacking conference 2011 to jailbreak Dell Venue Pro a Windows Phone 7 device. Though Pwn2Own mostly concerns to the PCs and laptops but this year it seems that it will be also hacked to hacking activities on mobile devices.
According to Pwn2Own spokesperson:
This year we are excited to announce we have increased the attack surface eligible for a successful hack against the mobile phone targets. We will have a base station on-site so that competitors will be able to perform attacks against the cell phone basebands. Due to the sensitive nature of the vulnerabilities we expect and the fact that an attack would require the exploit to be transmitted over RF, we will have this nifty RF enclosure from Ramsey Electronics on hand for testing. This device has a built-in video recording feature and we plan on publishing the feed after the contest has ended.
The organizers of Pwn2Own are planning to attempt the following devices and some Internet applications.
* Dell Venue Pro running Windows Phone 7
* iPhone 4 running iOS
* Blackberry Torch 9800 running Blackberry 6 OS
* Nexus S running Android
The following individuals are attempting the listed devices and Internet applications.
* Apple Safari: VUPEN, Anon_07, Team Anon, Charlie Miller
* Mozilla Firefox: Sam Thomas, Anonymous_1
* Microsoft Internet Explorer: Stephen Fewer, VUPEN, Sam Thomas
* Google Chrome: Moatz Khader, Team Anon
* Apple iPhone: Anon_07, Dion Blazakis and Charlie Miller, Team Anon, Anonymous_1
* RIM Blackberry: Anonymous_1, Team Anon
* Samsung Nexus S: Jon Oberheide, Anonymous_1, Anon_07, Team Anonymous
* Dell Venue: George Hotz, Team Anonymous, Anonymous_1
Geohot joked on his personal blog in January that he planned to purchase a Windows Phone 7 device and immediately caught Microsoft’s attention. Brandon Watson, Director of Developer Experience for Windows Phone, posted a tweet promising a free Windows Phone if Hotz wanted to “build cool stuff on #wp7″. Hotz and two other teams named Team Anonymous and Anonymous_1 will attempt to break into the Dell Venue Pro running Windows Phone 7 next week. Geohot is known for his ability to jailbreak both the iPhone and PlayStation 3. Hotz is currently being pursued by Sony who sued him over 8 counts of DMCA violation. We’ll have to wait until next week to see if he is successful, but given his past success there’s a good chance that Windows Phone could be compromised.
Pwn2Own has informed that Geohot has backed out of the contest to “devote time to the Sony lawsuit”. Other individuals will still attempt to hack Windows Phone 7 however.
