Google pays Indian hackers ₹18 lakh: Know here’s why

Sreeram KL and Sivanesh Ashok, two Indian hackers, have written in a blog post that they tried to find bugs in Google’s software, specifically in the Google Cloud platform. The blog post mentions that they were new to the platform and were exploring it when they identified a problem in one of the features known as ‘SSH-in-browser’.

“Since this was our first step into Google Cloud, we naturally stumbled upon one of the most popular products, Compute Engine. While exploring its features and how it works, I noticed an SSH-in-browser. It is a feature in GCP that lets users access their computer instances, through SSH, via the browser. Visually, this interface looks very similar to Cloud Shell, wrote Ashok in his blog post.

Furthermore, he states that the feature lets users access their system, instances like a virtual machine through their web browser, using a protocol known as SSH. The bug found might possibly let someone control another person’s machinery which could be a serious issue.

The American technology giant has fixed the issue by adding a security feature known as cross-site request forgery (CSRF) protection to enhance the security of the program.

Meanwhile, ever since its introduction in December last year, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has raised alarms at Google. According to a report by The New York Times, the software giant is working on a version of Google Search engine with chatbot features. Such is the FOMO that the company is said to unveil more than 20 projects powered by artificial intelligence (AI), most likely at its annual I/O event later this year.

As per The New York Times, Google has called in its founding fathers – Larry Page and Sergey Brin for the AI battle. Both Page and Brin held several meetings with the company’s executives last month. Topic of these meetings? ‘A rival’s new chatbot, a clever A.I. product that looked as if it could be the first notable threat in decades to Google’s $149 billion search business,’ the report says.