In this paper, chaotic dynamics of the vibro-impact system under bounded noise excitation is investigated by an extended Melnikov method. Firstly, the Melnikov method in the deterministic vibro-impact system is extended to the stochastic case. Then, a typical stochastic Duffing vibro-impact system is given to application. The analytic conditions for occurrence of chaos are derived by using the random Melnikov process in the mean-square-value sense. In addition, the numerical simulations confirm the validity of analytic results. Also, the influences of interesting system parameters on the chaotic dynamics are discussed.