Charlie Miller became the first "four-peat" at Pwn2Own when he teamed with Dion Blazakis to take down the iPhone. Both Miller and Blazakis work for the Baltimore-based consulting firm Independent Security Evaluators (ISE).

Miller has walked off with winnings from Pwn2Own four years running -- 2008 through 2011 -- twice as many times as anyone else.

"Every other year I've had an exploit ready to go for months," said Miller in an interview after the win. "But this was a different experience, working under the time pressure because we were working on [the iPhone] exploit the night before."

Miller credited his partner for much of the work. "Dion's a really good researcher in his own right," said Miller.

Miller and Blazakis worked on their iPhone exploit for months, Miller said. "This one was pretty hard. Different bugs take different exploits, and this one was hard to exploit."