Google Offering $20K for Chrome Pwn2Own Hack

It’s that time of year again!

CanSecWest takes place on March 9 and as usual, there’ll be the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest. However, this year there’s a new platform on the block -- Google’s Chrome OS -- and the search giant is happy to encourage participants to give it all they’ve got. ZDNet reports that Mountain View is offering a prize of $20,000 for the first person to crack its Chrome OS notebook via a vulnerability and sandbox escape in the Chrome browser.

As for other OSes, CanSecWest is also offering cash prizes for those who successfully exploit previously unpublished browser flaws to remotely launch code against 64-bit Windows 7 or Mac OS X machines. IT Business Edge puts these prizes at $15,000 a piece and reports that Nokia’s Symbian has been dropped from the program this year.

For the last three years running, Charlie Miller has been the first to break Safari (in 2009 he hacked it in 10 seconds). At Pwn2Own 2010, Peter Vreugdenhil, an independent researcher, exploited two vulnerabilities in IE8 to break into a machine running a fully patched version of 64-bit Windows 7. A contestant named only as Nils broke through Firefox, also running 64-bit Windows 7.

Sources:
ZDNet
IT Business Edge
Tom’s Hardware