Safari and IE8 Were the First to Fall at Pwn2Own
Apple's Safari browser was the first to fall at the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest taking place at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver.
Every year, Pwn2Own sees security experts and hackers attempt to hack into machines by exploiting vulnerabilities in the computers' browsers. This year, both Apple and Google released last minute updates before the competition started. Despite this, Safari was the first to fall. Ars Technica reports that VUPEN, a French security company and the first to take a shot at Apple's browser, had gained control of the fully-patched Mac OS X 10.6.6 MacBook five seconds after the browser visited its specially-crafted web page. Despite Apple's update to Safari, the exploit still worked in version 5.0.4.
Next to go was Internet Explorer, which didn't receive an update prior to the competition. Stephen Fewer of Harmony Security managed to beat the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer 8 running on 64-bit Windows 7 Service Pack 1 using three separate vulnerabilities. Two of these were to achieve successful code execution within the browser, with the third being needed escape IE's Protected Mode sandbox. Fewer told Ars that it took him five to six weeks to put together the attack.
The hacker scheduled to take on Google’s Chrome on a Cr-48 Chrome OS notebook was a no-show.
Read more about the exploits and the hackers that beat Safari and IE8 on Ars Technica.

Why? Considering:
Fewer told Ars that it took him five to six weeks to put together the attack.
It fascinates me how people can take things so widely out of context. The amount of preparation is what you should look at, not the time frame from within the attack was executed.
They come up with the exploits prior to the contest and then when the contest starts it's just a case of just running it. Still very impressive, though. Particularly when you consider the fact that Apple patched Safari the day before the competition. That could easily have neutralized VUPEN's exploit.
Makes you wonder how would be our security landscape if Apple did got 70-80% of world's computing resources.
Who falls first, second, third, etc. is all down to how the event is scheduled.
Steve will come out and say :
"You use the internet wrong."
No, they do not publish them publicly to allow "Black Hat" hackers to exploit them for malicious purposes.
This is a professional event designed to test and FIX issues with the worlds popular Browsers and OS's
Yes it can.
What was that quote from BTTF? Oh yeah, "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything" Marty to George Mcfly.
As for Safari, it shows just how vulnerable Mac OSX really is. Since Apple doesn't have many viruses, they don't worry about patching holes. I can imagine if a bad virus got out, a lot of Mac fans would be pissed.
But Jobes would just tell them they are using it wrong anyways.
Funny, and let's have a conspiracy theory about this too
Shouldn't that be, "Safari was the first to fall at Pwn2Own"?
Yes, but that would be tantamount to admit that Safari (an Apple product) is less secure than IE8 (a Microsoft product). You will not see such a thing on certain websites, this one included.
The hacker for Chrome must of been an no-show because he was too busy fighting off the army of Androids that Google sent out to hunt him down and "take him out".
LOL
This isn't Hollywood. What the hackers do at pwn2own is execute attacks that were prepared and tested long before the event even started.
Which system falls first is determined by the organizers, who decide when a hacker gets to attack what, and has nothing whatsoever to do with security.
LOL
or the hacker could have failed at compromising the system, which has everything to do with security.....