Google has paid out a $60,000 (£37,000) bounty to an online hacker who successfully managed to cracked its Chrome web-browser, as part of a competition to iron out any blips in the software.
The winner of the contest – which was part of the Hack In The Box conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – was a technology expert named “Pinkie Pie”, who was the only person with a successful entry.
It said in a blog post: “Since this exploit depends entirely on bugs within Chrome to achieve code execution, it qualifies for our highest award level as a ‘full Chrome exploit,’ a $60,000 prize and free Chromebook.”
Google said that bug found by Pinkie Pie has already been fixed and that an updated version of Chrome was rolled out to customers within 10 hours of the flaw being found.
Google originally set aside $2m to pay to hackers taking part in the contest, but only Pinkie Pie, who also won last year, could break the web browser. However, it is thought that many hackers shunned the contest because they believed they could be better rewarded by selling their findings on the open market.
Earlier this year, the firm announced that it was upping the amount it would pay for a single hack from $3,133 to $20,000.
