The Google giant has been providing bug bounties to security experts for years. The security experts that are able to find bugs and vulnerabilities on the Google environment via the Google Bug Bounty program are often paid a generous fee which is between 500 dollar and 150 000 dollar. In 2014, the Google giant spend over 1.5 million dollar in their Google Bug Bounty program and since 2010 they have spend over 4 million dollar on the Google Bug Bounty program.
The Google post stated that in 2014, they had paid 200 different researchers a bug bounty and over 500 bugs were found in the Google environments.
In 2015 the Google Giant will operate on a different type of Google Bug Bounty program. The Google giant has stated that they will grant researchers a 31337 payment for their time that is spend in researching Google vulnerabilities and bugs.
Google has stated that they will open an extra road for Google Bug hunters. The security experts are able to get paid up front by Google. The new program allows researchers to sign up for specific tasks within the Google company. Google will send the researcher information about the bug or vulnerability and the researcher will be allowed to perform research on the specific environment.
The extra Bug bounty program allows researchers to:
- Earn a maximum of 3133,70 USD
- To join various bug bounty tiers
- To get rewarded for extra bugs which are found
But it is not just the Google environment which is being focused in the new bug bounty program. Google has announced that the bug bounty experts are allowed to research Google products which are shared via Google Play and iTunes. Google has stated that the iTunes Google products and the Android Google products are allowed within the new scope of the vulnerability reward program.