Google pays Russian hacker $60k for bypassing Chrome’s sandbox

It wasn’t too long ago I was in the Eastern Block of Europe. As you would expect, I had my run in with hackers, excessive vodka drinking, and the mob. But nothing quite says "Russia," like hackers. You want free software? They got it. So it comes to us to no surprise that a Russian university student hacked Google Chrome with bypassing the sandbox.

Now before you get alarmed and up your antivirus and firewalls, Google okayed this hack; more so, it was a competition put on by Google. The hack was the handy work of Sergey Glazunov, who is a regular contributor to Google’s security research department. Glazunov scored a payoff of $60,000 in Google’s new Pwnium hacker contest which began to run this year as an alternative to Pwn2Own.

According to Justin Schuh, a member of the Chrome security team, Glazunov’s by-pass was Chrome specific, which allowed him to bypass the sandbox entirely. Furthermore he added that Glazunov’s work was “very impressive” and would allow the hacker to do anything on the machine. However, bypassing the sandbox is not a trivial matter; that is why Google paid out $60,000 for the hack. A fix has already been released.

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