Avast Launches Bug Bounty Program

AV Vendor Avast has announced that they’ll be sponsoring a bug bounty program, in order to reward researchers who discover flaws in their software. Avast, a Prague-based vendor of AV software – popular among home and small business users, will focus the program on five types of flaws, paying as much as $3,000 per bug.

Avast is focusing on software related issues, Web-based problems will not qualify for bounty payments. Researchers are encouraged to inspect current versions of shipping software including Avast Free Antivirus, Avast Pro Antivirus, and Avast Internet Security for several types of flaws.

Ranking by order of importance, Avast says that bounties will be paid for disclosure of remote code execution flaws, local privilege escalation, denial-of-service, sandbox bypasses, and certain types of scanner bypasses.

Base payout is $200 per bug, but depending on the criticality of the bug (as well as its neatness) “the bounty goes much higher (each bug is judged independently by a panel of avast! experts). Remote code execution bugs pay at least $3,000 – $5,000 or more.”

The program is limited to Windows-based versions of Avast software only, meaning that a bug in a Microsoft library (even if it’s used by Avast) will not count. Payments will be made to PayPal accounts, but other considerations can be made on a case-by-case basis.

Additional details on the program are available here.