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Journalism of Courage
Google’s latest flagship Pixel smartphone fell victim to a team of white-hat hackers from China at the ‘PwnFest hacking competition’ held in Seoul, South Korea. Team ‘Qihoo 360’ from China managed to run a remote code execution in the Pixel phone in less than a minute via a zero-day vulnerability, according to a report in The Register.
While the hackers didn’t disclose the exact vulnerability, they gained ‘remote code execution’ to display “Pwned By 360 Alpha Team” on the Chrome browser. However the report adds, Google has already patched the vulnerability that allowed the hackers to take control of the Chrome browser. The patch has already been released in a new stable build.
‘Qihoo 360’ team managed to win a total of $ $520,000 in prize money as it also managed to hack into Adobe Flash in just four seconds. Interestingly Qihoo 360 is not the first team to hack into the Google Pixel smartphone.
Also read: Google Pixel XL review: The new Android flagship in the market
Another zero-day vulnerability was discovered at a PwnFest in Japan by Keen Team of Tencent, which allowed these hackers to compromise the phone’s major functions like calls, messaging, photos, etc. Google has not yet commented on whether this particular vulnerability has been patched or not.
Google’s Pixel smartphone wasn’t the only one shamed at the PwnFest hacking in Seoul. Apple’s Safari browser also managed to gain ‘root privilege’ to the browser via a zero-day vulnerability.
For Google, the Pixel comes with a lot of expectations, and this is their first ‘Made by Google’ smartphone. Google has promised constant security updates with this phone as well. However, the idea that Chinese hackers gained control of the device in under 60 seconds probably doesn’t come as a good news for the company.
In India, the Google Pixel series starts at Rs 57,000 and goes up all the Rs 76,000. Google is pitching this as an alternative to the Apple iPhone 7.
