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Google Pledges Pi Million Dollars In Pwnium 3 Prizes

Posted by samzenpus on from the puns-are-fun dept.

chicksdaddy writes "Google cemented its reputation as the squarest company around Monday (pun intended), offering prizes totaling Pi Million Dollars — that's right: $3.14159 million greenbacks — in its third annual Pwnium hacking contest, to be held at the CanSecWest conference on March 7 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Google will pay $110,000 for a browser or system level compromise delivered via a web page to a Chrome user in guest mode or logged in. The company will pay $150,000 for any compromise that delivers 'device persistence' delivered via a web page, the company announced on the chromium blog. 'We believe these larger rewards reflect the additional challenge involved with tackling the security defenses of Chrome OS, compared to traditional operating systems,' wrote Chris Evans of Google's Security Team."

10 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Needs to go to the cents... by sconeu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    $3,141,592.65 whould be better.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  2. Cost of business by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For exploits like that, the black market still pays somewhat better than Google is. All I'm saying is, if I were sitting on a chrome exploit that allowed remote code execution, I wouldn't sell it for a measily $150 grand. That's worth a couple million, easy.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Cost of business by kwerle · · Score: 2

      I'll bite:
      Where? Who is paying that kind of money?

    2. Re:Cost of business by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Chrome: $80-200k

      Keep in mind, that's the sale price; It does not mean you get it exclusively. You can sell it to multiple parties, unlike Google.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  3. Pi Million Dollars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That just ain't rational.

    1. Re:Pi Million Dollars? by steelfood · · Score: 3, Informative

      At least it's real.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  4. I'd like a slice of that Pi, please. by plalonde2 · · Score: 2

    But if they were really trying to be correct they'd have made the price Tau dollars.

  5. The Tau of Pi by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 2

    We settle for Pi when you can have Tau?

    http://tauday.com/

  6. Cracking, not hacking by YurB · · Score: 2

    This is a cracking contest: the goal is to break stuff. If the goal was to write a new compiler or OS, then I would call it hacking. Yep, only geeks use that word that way, but isn't Slashdot a geeky site? I believe it's a good idea to promote the distinction between hacking and cracking, because otherwise Gnu/Linux (and possibly things like Wikipedia) could be called 'cancer' again. And yet they are the opposite.

    1. Re:Cracking, not hacking by YurB · · Score: 2

      Exactly. It has both meanings, but most people don't know that. If we used the word more carefully, we'd be educating more people that there's some difference between those hackers who have built Gnu/Linux, and those who and steal money from bank accounts. The problem is that most people don't know the other meaning. Why not let them know by occasionally using the 'cr' instead of 'h'? It's only one extra byte.