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Chrome Pays Prizes to Hackers Google Dared To Find Weaknesses

(In this photo illustration, Google’s new Internet Browser ‘Chrome’ is seen on a laptop screen on September 7, 2008 in Berlin, Germany.)

Photo Illustration by Patrik Stollarz/Getty Images

Sometimes you need hackers to help you avoid getting hacked.

Google offered to pay as much as $1 million to anyone who could show vulnerabilities in its Chrome browser, and this week hackers got $60,000 for doing just that.

Compared to peers like Safari and Internet Explorer, Chrome has been a seemingly impenetrable Web surfing fortress at Pwn2Own, an annual security competition run by HP. This year the browser is holding its own competition, Pwnium, during which a Russian university student exposed a weakness in Chrome’s “sandbox,” which aims to protect users’ offline computer information from online hacks.

With contest entrants required to divulge their hacking process, you will likely see Chrome making further improvements to an already tight browser ship. Time to move on, Netscape Navigator holdouts.