Google to offer up to US$2.7 million for people to hack Chrome OS at Vancouver conference

Care to earn some extra cash and in Vancouver this March? Google is opening registration for Pwnium contest this March at CanSecWest security conference to be held in the coastal seaport city. The tech giant uses the Pwnium contest to discover bugs in both the Chrome operating system and browser.

Google will be offering US$110,000 for each exploit satisfying the criteria “browser or system-level compromise in guest mode or as a logged-in user, delivered via a web page.” And $150,000 for those who can “compromise with device persistence: guest to guest with interim reboot, delivered via a web page.” There will also be “significant bonuses for demonstrating a particularly impressive or surprising exploit.” The hacks can be performed on the Intel-based Acer C270 or ARM-based HP Chromebook 11. Registration is open until 5pm Pacific Time on March 10.

Syrian Electronic Army hacked Skype’s blog, Facebook, and Twitter accounts

Skype's Twitter hack message

The Syrian Electronic Army couldn’t wait to start the year with a cyber-attack. This time they took down Microsoft Skype’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and the official blog to call for an end to spying.

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Breaking News: Sony's PlayStation Network is back on

After almost a month of being hacked and compromised, Sony's PlayStation Network has begun to come back online. The video above shows Sony's Kazuo Hirai explaining that the restoration of online gameplay across PS2 and Qriocity, Hulu, PlayStation home and others. Users are asked to download the software update as well as change their passwords in order to improve their security.

How to enhance your 1st Gen AppleTV with Boxee beta

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The introduction of the new AppleTV all but renders the previous hard-drive model obsolete. You can still buy and rent movies and TV shows from iTunes but no more software updates means the old AppleTV's wont be getting Netflix and their use outside the iTunes ecosystem is pretty much dead in the water. Thankfully, Boxee exists and it is free and easy enough to install, we show you how.

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