Google offers £12,500 and a laptop to the first person to hack its Chrome browser



It's a move that reeks of extreme confidence, bordering on the reckless.

Google is so certain its Chrome browser is unhackable it has promised to award £12,500 ($20,000) and a notebook to the first person who proves them wrong.

The company laid down the gauntlet ahead of the fifth annual Pwn2Own hacking competition next month.

Gauntlet: Google is so certain its Chrome browser is unhackable it has promised to award £12,500 and a laptop to the first person who proves them wrong

Its award is the largest ever offered at the challenge, which takes place at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, on March 9.

Using machines running Windows 7 or Mac OS X, researchers will try and hack into Google Chrome as well as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari browsers.

Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple have each offered $15,000 to the first person who can crack their browsers' security - $5,000 more than was given to the successful hackers at last year's event.

Google, however, has raised the bar by offering $20,000, a sign of the confidence senior executives at the California firm have in Chrome.

Aaron Portnoy, of HP TippingPoint, the sponsor of Pwn2Own, said: 'We've upped the ante this time around and the total cash pool allotted for prizes has risen to a whopping $125,000.'

In order to take Google's money - as well as a Chrome CR-48 notebook - on the first day of the three-day event, the successful hacker must find and exploit into two vulnerabilities in its code, reports ComputerWorld.com.

On the second and third day, hackers can use a bug from outside Chrome to try and infiltrate its defences. The first successful researcher will still receive $20,000, but half the prize money will be paid by sponsor TippingPoint.



In December Chrome saw its share of the worldwide web browser market rise to 14.9.

Internet Explorer was the most popular with a 46.9 per cent market share, Firefox was second with 30.8 per cent, followed by Chrome in third place.

