Hackers at the Pwn2Own hacking contest exploited bugs in Web browsers Safari and Internet Explorer 8 and brought them successfully down, while Google’s survived.

According to reports, a team of researchers at the hacking contest at CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, Canada, took just five seconds to exploit Apple’s Safari. French computer security firm Vupen pocketed $15,000 plus a
13-inch Apple MacBook Air for cracking safari.

Ireland-based security researcher Stephen Fewer managed to crack the latest version of Microsoft’s Web browser Internet Explorer 8 on a Sony Vaio running the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

However, hackers failed to crack Google’s Chrome web browser. Matt Cutts from Google posted a message on Twitter proclaiming, “I *love* Pwn2Own! Safari and IE8 were cracked on the first day, but not Chrome.”

The Apple iPhone 4 and the BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphones also succumbed to the hacking contest. The iPhone was hacked by Charlie Miller and Dion Blazakis, who work for the Baltimore-based consulting firm Independent Security Evaluators.

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 OS was cracked by a team of researchers including Vincenzo Iozzo, Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, Miller and Blazakis.

Pwn2Own every year pits hackers against the latest versions of web browsers and mobile phone operating systems.