Google is promising to pay $20,000 to any researcher who can hack into its Chrome browser at an upcoming hacker contest.
Google is putting up the prize money for this year's Pwn2Own hacking contest at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia on March 9.
Altogether Pwn2Own is offering $125,000 in prize money for the hacking contest. Along with the Google money, HP TippingPoint, which runs the Pwn2Own contest, is offering $105,000 for the $125,000 total cash pool.
HP TippingPoint is Hewlett-Packard's network security division. HP acquired TippingPoint last year when it bought 3Com, which in turn bought TippingPoint in 2005.
"Kudos to the Google security team for taking the initiative to approach us on this; we're always in favor of rewarding security researchers for the work they too-often do for free," wrote Aaron Portnoy, security research team manager, in a blog post.
This year marks the fifth annual Pwn2Own hacking contest. Last year contestants successfully hacked into Safari, Internet Explorer 8 and Fire Fox -- but not Chrome -- as well as Apple's iPhone.
