Geeky Note

Sometimes you need hackers to help you avoid getting hacked.
Google offered to pay as much as $1 million to anyone who could show vulnerabilities in its Chrome browser

Less than two weeks after Google launched Pwnium, a competition for hackers to find security exploits in Chrome, the search giant has announced its first winner.

Google has paid out $60,000 to a security researcher for demonstrating a 'full Chrome exploit' in its Chrome web browser.

Sergey Glazunov, who has built up a reputation for demonstrating weaknesses in Chromium, is the first researcher to be awarded the $60,000 top prize. Glazunov showed off a remote code execution vulnerability in Chrome on an up-to-date Windows 7 system, which qualifies as a full Chrome exploit.

The exploit makes it possible for a malicious hacker to do just about anything they want on an infected machine.

$60,000 - “Full Chrome exploit”: Chrome / Win7 local OS user account persistence using only bugs in Chrome itself.

$40,000 - “Partial Chrome exploit”: Chrome / Win7 local OS user account persistence using at least one bug in Chrome itself, plus other bugs. For example, a WebKit bug combined with a Windows sandbox bug.

$20,000 - “Consolation reward, Flash / Windows / other”: Chrome / Win7 local OS user account persistence that does not use bugs in Chrome.