HP Collaborates with Leading Researchers to Identify Security Threats at Pwn2Own Competition

VANCOUVER, British Columbia,----

HP today announced the opening of the fifth annual Pwn2Own competition, in which security researchers reverse engineer software and devices to identify vulnerabilities in many of the most popular consumer products, including leading internet browsers and mobile phones.

The contest, which HP Digital Vaccine Labs (DVLabs) has sponsored since its inception, is taking place at the 12th annual CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada, March 9-11.

HP will use the results of the Pwn2Own contest to create vulnerability filters for its industry-leading HP TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System. Having immediate access to the vulnerabilities discovered at Pwn2Own helps HP deliver to clients the fastest, most comprehensive attack protection available.

HP DVLabs, a research organization within HP that analyzes security vulnerabilities, submits the information about found vulnerabilities to product vendors and simultaneously provides filters to protect customers while the vendors develop patches.

Advanced data protection is a key component of HP’s Converged Infrastructure, which integrates data center technologies to simplify IT environments, resulting in improved flexibility and scalability, and reduced total cost of ownership.

“Customers demand security solutions that will protect their data and applications from a wide variety of vulnerabilities, whether they are patched by the vendor or not,” said Dan Holden, director, HP DVLabs. “Sponsoring the Pwn2Own contest for the fifth consecutive year enables HP to remain on the leading edge of the security industry, so we can offer our clients unique protection against advanced attacks.”

Contestants at this year’s Pwn2Own event will be tasked with exploiting Microsoft® Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome as well as four mobile devices, including the Dell Venue Pro, Apple iPhone 4, BlackBerry Torch 9800 and Nexus S. HP DVLabs will be awarding up to $105,000 in prizes to the researchers who successfully compromise the targets. Google, the first vendor to sponsor the contest, will be awarding an additional $20,000 in prizes.

Daily competition updates and more information about Pwn2Own is available at the HP DVLabs blog and the twitter account of Aaron Portnoy, manager, Security Research, HP DVLabs.

Enterprise security is essential to the Instant-On Enterprise. In a world of continuous connectivity, the Instant-On Enterprise embeds technology in everything it does to serve customers, employees, partners and citizens with whatever they need, instantly.

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