Google has announced to double the cash reward for the next Pwnium contest to be held in October. This year, Google will award up to $2 million for different levels of exploits involving Chrome and other applications. Pwnium 2 will be organized at the Hack In The Box conference in Malaysia on 10th October 2012. The registration for the event is open for developers, hackers and web enthusiasts.

Google had awarded two independent hackers, Sergey Glazunov and Pinkie Pie, during the first Pwnium contest in March this year. Pwnium 1 was organized parallel to the Pwn2Own 2012.

Reward for full Chrome exploit is $60,000 for which a hacker must use vulnerabilities present in Chrome on Windows 7. For partial  exploits using bugs present in Chrome and other products like Flash or Windows, hackers would get $50,000. There are rewards for discovering Non-Chrome specific exploits as well. The best entry will also receive a Acer Aspire V5-571-6869 laptop. Hackers need to demonstrate their exploits on the latest stable release of Chrome.

Google already runs bug bounty programs for reporting vulnerabilities in Chrome and Chrome OS. Various critical bugs have been discovered through this program in the past.