Found a Bug? Tell Google and They’ll Pay You Up to $20,000 For It

Google launched its Vulnerability Reward Program last November 2011 to encourage programming whizzes and IT experts to forward information on bugs they find on any of the search giant's online services. This includes all of the content in these Google-owned domains: *.google.com, *.youtube.com, *.blogger.com, and *.orkut.com.

Google recently updated the terms of the program, adjusting the rates of the financial rewards that bug reporters get for informing them about security holes and vulnerabilities. The top bounty that was offered during the first year of the program was a mere $3,133.70. Now this figure has been multiplied six times over and bumped up to a whopping $20,000.

Those who send in reports of qualifying bugs are granted financial rewards that range from $100 to $20,000, depending on the type of bugs and on the priority of the applications that they affect. This table basically breaks everything down according to their corresponding amounts:

Google asserts that the program will "help focus the research on bringing the greatest benefit to [their] users." It also revealed that over 780 qualifying vulnerability reports have been received since the program's launch, with payouts totaling $460,000 made to around 200 individuals.

Article by Hazel Chua
Gigadgetry: Cool Gadgets, Tech News, Quirky Devices