14 DAY TRIAL // A few hours before the Pwnium competition ended, a security enthusiast known as Pinkie Pie earned himself a prize of $60,000 (45,000 EUR) for identifying three zero-day vulnerabilities present in Chrome. Google almost immediately released an update for the browser’s stable channel to address the issues.
Pinkie Pie, who didn’t want to be named because his employer didn’t approve of his activities, found the security holes in about 10 days, Wired reports.
The security expert said that it wasn’t too difficult to escape Chrome’s sandbox, even though this was the first time he submitted a vulnerability to Google.
In response to the findings, Google released the Chrome Stable 17.0.963.79 to address the errant plug-in load and GPU process memory corruption issue.
While this and Glazunov’s discovery were the only ones to enter the Pwnium competition, as part of Pwn2Own, Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox were also compromised. Chrome Stable 17.0.963.79 is available for download here.