Korean hacker legitimately earned 225,000 dollars in just two days

Hackers are not always exclusively negative characters. Some of them help to protect our computers and gadgets from the theft of information and hacking. Such enthusiasts gather in the framework of the annual competition Pwn2Own, which is sponsored by Google. During this event, hackers from around the world demonstrate to the contest jury the bugs they discovered, vulnerabilities and exploits in various applications and operating systems. Of course, for every bug detected, a hacker receives an award from the organizers.

This year, the hacker Jun Hong Lee from South Korea, also known under his pseudonym lokihardt, was particularly distinguished. The young man was just in shock, so he identified one vulnerability after another. First, he broke the browser Chrome, earning this $ 75,000. Then he demonstrated how using the same browser you can organize a large-scale attack on the operating system, having received another $ 25,000 for it. The finishing touch was his proof that this technique works both in the case of the beta version of the browser, and in the final build. For this jury awarded him an additional 10,000 dollars.

But this Korean genius seemed a little. He put Internet Explorer 11 on the blades, earning $ 65,000 on it. Then the hacker went through Safari, having received an additional $ 50,000 for breaking his browser into his piggy bank. Having earned a total of $ 225,000 for two days of the competition, June Hong Lee finally relaxed and took a breath.

In 2014, specialists of the French company VUPEN within Pwn2Own earned a total of $ 400,000, discovering 11 vulnerabilities in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash. But in that case a team of specialists worked, and June Hong Lee became the most successful single at this contest.

In total, the contestants found 21 bugs, including 5 bugs in Windows, 4 bugs in Internet Explorer and 3 bugs in Firefox. A total of 557,500 dollars was paid to the participants. Of course, the detected bugs and vulnerabilities will not be published publicly until the developers of operating systems, browsers and other applications, will not release patches, correcting the revealed shortcomings of their software.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/technology/korejskij-xaker-zakonno-zarabotal-225-000-dollarov-vsego-za-dva-dnya.html.