Google has confirmed that Pwnium, a competition for hackers in which the goal is to discover security flaws in the Chrome OS, will take place again for the third time. The company at Mountain View is offering a hefty prize of $3,141,590, which has been dubbed Pi in reference to the mathematical constant.
The event will be held in Vancouver, Canada, this coming March. Just like the previous conferences, the purpose is to find security flaws in Google products. This edition in particular will focus on Chrome OS, the cloud-based operating system derived from the Chrome browser.
In addition to the $3 million, other cash prizes of $110,000 and $150,000 will be allotted to those who find security holes in the Samsung 5 Series 550 Chromebook. There will also be more prizes for those who find other smaller issues. The majority of the participants will be computer-security experts and renowned hackers.
What Google is hoping to do is show off its Chrome Operating System’s security to the world (or perhaps find out if it really is secure). The announcement was made amid a streak of worrisome news regarding computer security flaws, such as the security vulnerabilities discovered in Java just a few weeks ago, the attack on Twitter a few days ago, or the spam email of which Panda Labs has alerted users that releases malware or a trojan virus that can access users’ banking information.
