The third spot for the world’s most popular browser is taken by Mozilla Firefox which is used by 23.73% of people worldwide. These statistics were given to us by StatCounter (the biggest website statistics company) and are also publicly available at the following url: http://gs.statcounter.com/
In May 2012 Google Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer worldwide as browser leader. There still are some regions where Internet Explorer is the browser leader. This is to be expected considering Internet Explorer comes as pre-installed on Windows Machines. Computers with a Microsoft operating system represent 90% of all computers world-wide. Google team plans to keep its ascending usage trends by following its strict guide-lines and code of ethics.
In this direction Google Chrome is continuously updated and improved. Google also takes security seriously. Last year it organised the “Pwnium competition” where it offered prizes that summed up $1 million for people that successfully exploited its popular web browser: Google Chrome. A web browser’s vulnerability to exploits is a serious issue. Governments and hackers buy unknown (the so called 0day vulnerability exploits) from the black market in order to be able to hack just about anyone. In an effort to solidify its position as the world’s most safe web browser Google re-opened the bug bounty hunt from last year and raised the bounty to $2 million. A big call to action was made to all hackers, security specialists and developers out there that want to make a name of themselves and win some money while doing it.
VUPEN security, a leading provider of defensive and offensive cyber security intelligence, is known to have succesfully exploited a default installation of Google Chrome during the Pwn2Own 2012 competition where it won the 1st place. The security company did not offer details in regards to the exploit and declared back then that it wouldn’t share the information with Google for even $1 million.
Will $2 million be enough? I guess we will see this at the new Google Chrome hacking competition that will be held in Mountain, California.
