Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdoowpilihp | Hacker News Reader

Whether or not this exploit is impressive, using the term "pwnd" comes across as incredibly unprofessional and predisposes me to perceiving this whole article in a negative light.

View on HN

I think it's a reference to the Pwn2Own contest - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pwn2Own

Chrome's historically performed extremely well in the competition, which is why it's notable they've actually found an exploit.

No disrespect intended, but, it doesn't negatively predispose anyone who conducts or utilizes vulnerability research professionally, so I doubt your concern matters much to them.

Oh, thank you for this comment. I wasn't aware that literally everyone who uses vulnerability research as part of their job had had a meeting and elected a spokesperson.

like it or not, it's been vernacular for quite some time. how do you feel about pwn2own? the pwnies?

"Whore" is vernacular, but that doesn't mean the FBI uses the word when they announce they've cracked a prostitution ring.

Only hiring offensive security vendors who won't use the term 'pwned' is roughly equivalent to trying to purchase a hand job from someone who won't use the term 'whore'. Neither is likely to get you very far.

I'd imagine the high-ends of both professions have higher standards of class and behaviour than the lower-ends.

It's called lingerie modeling.

It's not like "hacked" is a much better to the professional technical community.

Also pwned means something more specific than hacked. "owned" might be more "professional", but potentially more confusing, since Google didn't sell them the Chrome browser.

I guess you've never heard of the Pwn2Own event.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com