Google Chrome has just received a PR boost, courtesy of a white hat hacking contest. It’s the only web browser that survived unscathed, with Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer all forced to don the dunce’s cap: read on for all the details.
The Pwn2Own hacking competition has been taking place at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, and just one day in, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer have all been hacked, leaving just Google Chrome still standing.
The exploits were all pulled off by one “light side”, or in other words, not evil, hacker, too. Charlie Miller was the first to break Safari, but another security expert, “Nils”, bagged $15,000 along with a Sony VAIO P laptop after he managed to gain control it using another Safari exploit, as well as hacks for Firefox and IE.
So, Google Chrome, most secure eh? The browser wars just got even more interesting, although it’s worth stressing that Opera wasn’t part of the contest. Internet Explorer 8 (which, incidentally, has just gone live this very minute) is clearly not as secure as Steve Ballmer claims. We’ll let you know if anyone else makes any headway with Google Chrome at CanSecWest this week.
