Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Vulnerabilities

Google Updates Rules, Payouts For Bug Bounty Program

After celebrating the one-year mark for its Web bug bounty program back in February of this year, along with the announcement that, at the time, the search giant had paid out more than $400,000 in rewards to researchers, Google how has upped the ante in hopes that security researchers will further work to find and disclose more critical vulnerabilities on its systems in hopes of making the Google world more secure.

After celebrating the one-year mark for its Web bug bounty program back in February of this year, along with the announcement that, at the time, the search giant had paid out more than $400,000 in rewards to researchers, Google how has upped the ante in hopes that security researchers will further work to find and disclose more critical vulnerabilities on its systems in hopes of making the Google world more secure.

Today, Google said it was rolling out updated rules for its program, and that it would increases the amounts paid out to those who find and report critical bugs.

The company did, however, lower the amount paid out for vulnerabilities discovered in “non-integrated acquisitions and for lower risk issues”. The reasoning behind the decision being that Google wants to encourage security researchers to focus on finding security bugs that yield the greatest benefit to its users.

Rewards for qualifying bugs now range from $100 to $20,000, with the ultimate decision being made by the company’s reward panel at its discretion.

The new bounty payout structure looks like this: (Detailed chart is available here)

• $20,000 for qualifying vulnerabilities that the reward panel determines will allow code execution on our production systems.

• $10,000 for SQL injection and equivalent vulnerabilities; and for certain types of information disclosure, authentication, and authorization bypass bugs.

• Up to $3,133.7 for many types of XSS, XSRF, and other high-impact flaws in highly sensitive applications.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

“…While every flaw deserves appropriate attention, we are likely to issue a higher reward for a cross-site scripting vulnerability in Google Wallet than one in Google Art Project, where the potential risk to user data is significantly smaller,” Adam Mein and Michal Zalewski of Google’s Security Team noted in a blog post.

Related Reading: Microsoft RDP Vulnerability Leak Shines Light on Bug Sharing Program

Related Reading: Secunia Launches Reward Program for Vulnerability Coordination

Written By

For more than 15 years, Mike Lennon has been closely monitoring the threat landscape and analyzing trends in the National Security and enterprise cybersecurity space. In his role at SecurityWeek, he oversees the editorial direction of the publication and is the Director of several leading security industry conferences around the world.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Understand how to go beyond effectively communicating new security strategies and recommendations.

Register

Join us for an in depth exploration of the critical nature of software and vendor supply chain security issues with a focus on understanding how attacks against identity infrastructure come with major cascading effects.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

IoT Security

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car...

Vulnerabilities

A researcher at IOActive discovered that home security systems from SimpliSafe are plagued by a vulnerability that allows tech savvy burglars to remotely disable...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.

Vulnerabilities

The latest Chrome update brings patches for eight vulnerabilities, including seven reported by external researchers.