Google offers $2.7 million as bounty for hacking Chrome OS

Google is set to offer 2.7 million dollars as bounty for any security expert who is able to hack into its Chrome browser-based OS at the Pwnium 4 hacking contest.

As per ANI report, researchers would be allowed to choose between Intel- or ARM-powered laptops this year which is a shift in approach from Google that offered only Intel-powered devices last year at the Pwnium 4.

According to PC World, hackers would be paid prizes of $110,000 and $150,000 for exploiting the Chrome OS, and the highest bounty would be rewarded to those who deliver an exploit able to persistently compromise a Hewlett-Packard or Acer Chromebook.

Last year Google put 3.14159 million dollars in the contest, but paid out just 40,000 dollars to a prolific hacker who goes by "Pinkie Pie," the contest's sole participant, for what Google later called a partial exploit.

Google said that it would consider larger bonuses to researchers who demonstrated a "particularly impressive or surprising exploit," like one that could circumvent kASLR, a new variant of the better-known ASLR anti-exploit technology used by Apple, Microsoft and Chrome OS.

The report said that for hackers to qualify for the prizes or bonuses, they must provide functional exploit code and details on all the vulnerabilities put into play. Pwnium 4 is scheduled to take place on March 12 at the Canadian Security conference.