It's the most anticipated matchup in the hacker world: Linux versus Mac OS X versus Vista. Who will get hacked first?

That's what organizers of the CanSecWest security conference hope to discover this week as they give show attendees a shot at hacking into the three laptops they've put on display here in Vancouver.

The catch? They have to use a brand-new 'zero day' attack that nobody has seen before. The prize? US$20,000, plus you get to keep the laptop.

Show organizers are calling the contest PWN 2 OWN. Pwn (which rhymes with own) is a hacker term meaning to take control of a computer.

By late Wednesday -- the first day of the contest, nobody had even tried to hack the three laptops. This wasn't exactly a surprise to the contest's organizers because on day one attackers were only allowed to use network-based attacks that involved no user interaction. Those type of attacks are extremely rare these days.

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