The cash value of the prizes Google is willing to offer is very close to the value of the mathematical constant pi times a million.
While not so many people have heard of the Chrome OS, Google brags it is one of the world’s most secure and tough to hack operating system worldwide. And with the increased cash prizes Google is offering at the Pwnium hacking contest it is very likely that Google will get a lot of publicity and will manage to create buzz around Chrome OS.
The Pwnium hacking contest doesn’t require people to use their real names and thus it encourages hackers to join and show off their skills.
At the previous two Pwnium contests from October 2012 and March 2012 Google offered cash prizes of up to 2 million and 1 million dollars to whoever successfully exploited its web browser Chrome. For this edition of the Pwnium hacking competition contestants must exploit a Samsung 550 Chromebook via web-pages loaded through a Wi-Fi connection.
A temporary compromise of the operating system brings anyone $110000 and if after reboot the payload is still present the contestant gets another $40000. It is highly unlikely that someone will manage to get the whole prize of $3.14159 all for him/herself. It will remain to be seen if there are enough people who successfully exploit Google Chrome OS so that Google gives away the entire sum of $3.14159 million.
