VUPEN Security has announced the discovery of a vulnerability in Google’s Chrome browser software.
Google Chrome has survived assaults at the Pwn2Own contest for the last three years. Now, French security firm VUPEN says it is unhappy to announced that it has officially “Pwned” Google Chrome and its protective Sandbox measures.
VUPEN uploaded a video of the browser exploit in action which bypasses all security features including ASLR/DEP/Sandbox, without exploiting a Windows kernel vulnerability. It works on all Windows systems and with the latest versions of the Chrome browser.
In the video, a web page is loaded displaying just a text message - “Your browser is being Pwned!” - and after a few seconds of inactivity (and without a visible crash in Chrome), the windows calculator application runs. According to the VUPEN write-up, the calculator executable is downloaded and executed.
At Pwn2Own in March this year, VUPEN successfully attacked Safari in much the same way. A specially crafted web page was loaded and several seconds later, the Mac OS X calculator application was launched and a file was written to the hard drive to demonstrate that the Sandbox had been compromised.
For obvious reasons, the write-up does not disclose technical information on the exploit, only to say that it is one of the most sophisticated codes they have used so far.
Result for: Safari
Two days into the Pwn2Own hacking challenge, only a few still remain.
So far, hackers have not been able to exploit Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome, and the mobile Android OS.
Victims of the contest include Internet Explorer 8, Apple Safari 5, iOS 4 and BlackBerry.
All the security researchers who manage to exploit the browsers or operating systems take home a cash prize of $15,000 and a laptop. If Chrome gets beaten, the researcher takes home $20,000.
Charlie Miller beat the iPhone 4 with iOS and has taken home the prize in 2007, 2009, 2010 and this year.
Firefox fixed 10 security flaws the day before the contest started, and Google fixed 9. Chrome has yet to be defeated since its launch in 2008, while Firefox was beaten in 2009 and 2010.
Security researchers from VUPEN beat Safari 5, rather easily: “We pwned Apple Safari on Mac OS X (x64) at Pwn2Own in 5 seconds.”
Result for: Safari
Google has said today that it has converted 80 percent of all YouTube videos into the open-source WebM video format, while at the same time working with manufacturers to add more hardware support for the codec.
WebM is H.264’s largest rival in the video format world.
Product Manager John Luther noted that Google has been diligent in developments over the past months, but there is still a long road ahead for WebM.
For now, WebM is not widely supported, but it will be in Firefox 4, Opera 10.5+ and Chrome 6.
You can view the videos via Safari or Internet Explorer using third-party additions.
Google added that the first hardware chips with native WebM support will hit in the Q1 2011.
