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Chrome Hacked In 5 Minutes At Pwn2Own
Skuto writes "After offering a total prize fund of up to $1M for a successful Chrome hack, it seems Google got what it wanted (or not!). No more than 5 minutes into the Pwn2Own cracking contest team Vupen exploited 2 Chrome bugs to demonstrate a total break of Google's browser. They will win at least 60k USD out of Google's prize fund, as well as taking a strong option on winning the overall Pwn2Own prize. It also illustrates that Chrome's much lauded sandboxing is not a silver bullet for browser security."
I think all of the Pwn2Own exploits are discovered beforehand and then shown at this event. They could report it and get sued... or they could hold on to it, hope its not patched out or publicized and grab money and swag.
I think it's pretty clear they had their exploits worked out and ready to go for some time, and were just waiting for the contest to start to unleash them.
I think it's pretty clear this has always been the case in these pwn2own contests, whether the browser is Safari, Internet Explorer, or Chrome. This latest crack just makes it a little more obvious that it's a question of motivation more than anything else - and money is a powerful motivator, probably more so than notoriety (in sufficient quantities, anyway).
#DeleteChrome
This isn't Swordfish. They had plenty of time to prepare their attack.
It's impressive they exploited Chrome. But the preparation took more than 5 minutes.
Handing out 2mill of prize money is still more cost effective that standard R&D, you get more professionals testing it for the chance of wining some prize money than Google could ever employ and the people they chose not to employ.
Nobody shows up at one of these contests and cracks their knuckles and starts looking for holes. They always show up with a premade bag of polished and practiced zero-days.
Funny though how they get so much media attention every time this happens OMG safari got owned in six minutes! Chrome got hacked in 5 minutes! They must beg gods! no, not really.
There's really no reason they couldn't be doing this once a month really. I'd wager that the winners this round had 4-6 different exploits in their bag of tricks, and are strategically submitting them.
It would be in google's better interest to hold such contests monthly with smaller prizes. It'd just be paying for bugs, but the way they're doing it here is just moving a lot slower than it really should.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
And is that such a bad thing? For the white hats, the money's just a bonus.
But $1M is pretty cheap to increase the odds that those who might otherwise be tempted to join the black hats can still gain public recognition, still make some money, and because their hat can remain white, they don't even have to worry about prosecution.
In exchange for the coin, developers get responsible disclosure of lots of bugs (that might have otherwise remained under wraps, or might have been discovered first by black hats) in a controlled environment.
Win-win situation in my books.