Chrome OS found unhackable at Pwnium 3

HP's Pwn2Own competition is an annual contest held at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, where hackers attempt to exploit various browsers while competing for cash prizes. Furthermore, Google has begun holding their own event over the past 3 years, and the Pwnium challenge focuses exclusively on their Chrome OS notebooks.

This year, the Pwnium event took place on the 7th of March, and developers competed for up to $3.14159 million in prizes. Unfortunately for the hackers (and fortunately for Google), no exploitable hacks were found, as the Chrome OS-powered Series 5 550 proved a formidable challenge. The hacks were supposed to center around browser vulnerabilities when logged on as a guest or user, but nothing significant was found, although Google is evaluating one entry for partial credit.

On the other hand, the simultaneously ongoing Pwn2Own contest didn't prove to be as difficult, with most of the entries turning up exploits. All three of Internet Explorer, Firefox and the Chrome browser were taken down by MWR Labs and VUPEN, who netted over $250,000 in prizes. Surprisingly, Safari was the only browser to come out of the challenge unscathed, but that may be due to nobody pre-registering, despite a $75,000 bounty.

Source(s)