Google Offering $2.71828 Million To Hack Chrome OS!

Google has announced the fourth edition of its Pwnium competition for Chrome OS this March at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver. Up for grabs is a whopping $2.71828 Million!

Continuing with the trend starting in 2013, those who can hack Chrome OS will walk away with a six figure reward at Google's fourth Pwnium competition this March. The company will be offering up to a total of $2.71828 million in rewards for security researchers who manage to hack Chrome OS. The breakdown of Pwnium 4’s rewards is as follows: $110,000 (browser or system-level compromise in guest mode or as a logged-in user, delivered via a web page.) and $150,000 (compromise with device persistence: guest to guest with interim reboot, delivered via a web page.)

Security researchers can now choose between an ARM-based Chromebook (the WiFi-only HP Chromebook 11) or the Acer C720 Chromebook (the WiFi-only 2GB version) that is based on the Intel Haswell microarchitecture. It must be recalled that last year, only Intel-based Chrome OS devices were allowed to be hacked at the competition. Further, the attack must be demonstrated against the devices running whatever the Chrome OS stable version is at the time.

Google further revealed that it will be giving out bonuses to all those who come up with impressive or surprising exploit that may involve exploiting memory corruption in 64-bit browser processes or defeating kASLR or exploiting kernel from renderer processes. The full exploit must be given to Google, with explanations for all individual bugs used, all of which must be unknown, and exploits should be served from a password-authenticated and HTTPS-supported Google App Engine URL. Notably, no exploits for Chrome OS were found last year.
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Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill 

Google Chrome Will Now Detect And Fix 'Hijacked' Browser Settings!

Modification of browser settings is done without users' knowledge to generally force hits on a particular website.  

Imagine you're trying to download a free screensaver or game and later find out that the download came bundled with a malicious programme that's trying to 'hijack' your browser settings. Well, you're not alone, in fact, it's an issue that's continuing to grow at an alarming rate. So much so that hijacking of browser settings leads the list of user complaints made to search engine giant Google. Hijacking has existed for quite some time now. To curb the same, Google added a 'reset browser settings' button to Chrome's settings page in October 2013. However, hijacking of browser settings ceases to reduce. "Despite this, settings hijacking remains our number one user complaint." said Google. Hijacking includes a modification of the settings without users' knowledge directed to force hits on a particular site increasing its revenue as a result. Google's Chrome will now be prompting Windows users whose settings might have changed if they like to restore their browser settings back to factory default. The move will ensure the reset option reaches everyone who migght require it, thereby detecting and fixing hijacked browser settings more efficiently. "If you've been affected by settings hijacking and would like to restore your settings, just click 'Reset' on the prompt below when it appears," Google explained. However, some hijackers might leave behind processes that undermine user control of settings. In that case, the hijacking persists after a short period. Users can find additional help uninstalling such programmes in the Chrome help forum to counter the same. Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill