Google recently gave out rewards to people who alerted them on flaws or security vulnerabilities for their Chrome browser in an ongoing initiative to make their software safe and more secure. One hacker managed to do exactly that and was handsomely rewarded for his efforts.
[ad#Google Adsense 336×280]
The hacker codenamed “Pinkie Pie”, a character from the popular cartoon ‘My Little Pony’, managed to hack and alert Google on a flaw in the Chrome browser. The discovery was made during a hacker conference called Hack in the Box (HITB) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia recently.
Google’s engineer, Chris Evans, sang praises and thanks to Pinkie Pie on the company’s official blog. Thanks to his discovery, Google engineers were able to patch up the problem within 10 hours or less. Google did not reveal the real person behind the code name “Pinkie Pie”.
However, Pinkie Pie did not just get accreditation and praises for this. Since this exploit depends entirely on bugs within Chrome to achieve code execution, it qualified for Google’s highest award level as a “full Chrome exploit and thus Pinkie Pie was awarded US$60,000 and free Chromebook.
The Pwnium 2 competition was held at the Hack in the Box event in Kuala Lumpur. Pinkie Pie’s submission was the only one for the contest. This is Pinkie Pie’s second pwn, first being in May 2012.
The competition is an ongoing initiative by Google to find security holes in their software and system. Google announced in August that US$2 million prizes were to be given to engineers or anyone who could find holes in their system or software, following a similiar contest in February this year where they offered US$1 million.
Your can see the results published by Google for Pwnium.
So you want to be a hacker too?
Source: Chromium Blog
