In Hacking Competition, Android, Windows Phone 7 Devices Unscathed

After hackers descended on mobile phones as part of the Pwn2Own competition, two devices were left standing at the end, reports Wired.com: Android-powered Nexus S and Windows Phone 7-powered Dell Venue Pro.

The iPhone and BlackBerry? Hackers took just two days to crack into those operating systems. Charlie Miller and Dion Blazakis hacked the former and Vincenzo Iozzo, Willem Pinckaers and Ralf Philipp Weinmenn managed to break into a BlackBerry Torch 9800, according to Wired.com.

But the Android and Windows Phone devices ‘won’ by default; contestants scheduled to hack those phones backed out for a variety of reasons, Wired.com said.

Last year’s winner Peter Vreughdenhil told the technology magazine that he and other organizers felt iPhone’s quick fall came as no surprise, but that Android’s survival shocked them as “it is also a big target and had four contestants lined up”.

Vreughdenhil, however, cautions that “the survival of a target at Pwn2Own does not automatically declare it safer than a target that went down”.

“We see no particular reason why Android would be harder to hack than any of the other targets,” he was quoted as saying.