Usually when you spot an article that involves China, an American company, and hacking, it's bad news. That's not the case this time. Google actually welcomes this kind of hacking. In fact, they offer big cash rewards to the men and women who do it.
Image: Google
At a security conference in Seoul yesterday, a team from China's Qihoo 360 managed to hack Google's brand-new Pixel phone in less than a minute. Their attack left the Pixel vulnerable to remote code execution. Vulnerabilities like this give cybercriminals carte blanche to eavesdrop on victims, digitally pick their pockets, and utilize their devices in botnet attacks.
Fortunately, the Qihoo team was only interested in showing off their skills and pocketing the $120,000 bounty offered by Google. They're white hat hackers, which makes sense when you know that their employer is one of the largest security software companies in China.
Now that their exploit is in Google's hands, Pixel owners can breathe a sigh of relief. A patch should be released soon and their phones will no longer be vulnerable to this particular attack.
Qihoo 360's security team has been in the spotlight before. Two years ago they pulled off a similar attack on a Tesla Model S. They were able to control its locks, sound the horn, and even open the sunroof while the car was being driven. More worryingly, they shut down the car's stability and traction controls and interfere with its onboard charging system.
But just like they did with the Pixel phone, they provided the details of their exploit to Tesla and offered to help them fix it.
