Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Management & Strategy

Google Paid Out $9 Million in Bug Bounties Since 2010

Google has awarded researchers more than $9 million since the launch of its bug bounty program in 2010, including over $3 million paid out last year.

Google has awarded researchers more than $9 million since the launch of its bug bounty program in 2010, including over $3 million paid out last year.

According to the company, more than 1,000 payments were made last year to roughly 350 researchers from 59 countries. The biggest single reward was $100,000 and over $130,000 were donated by the search giant to charity.

Google also said it had paid out nearly $1 million each for vulnerabilities affecting the Android operating system and the Chrome web browser. In June, one year after the launch of its Android bug bounty program, the company decided to increase rewards for Android flaws.

In 2016, the company opened its Chrome Fuzzer Program to the public. The program allows experts to run fuzzers at large scale and they receive rewards automatically.

Google also highlighted the stories of an expert who donated his rewards to a Special Olympics team in the U.S., and an Indian researcher who funds his startup with bug bounty rewards.

The “2016 year in review” report also shows a proof-of-concept (PoC) video submitted by Frans Rosén, in which the researcher’s actions are synchronized to the background music. The video demonstrates a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the payments.google.com domain.

Google has been involved in third-party hacking competitions such as Pwn2Own and Pwnfest, but it also runs its own events. A contest that will run until March 14, named The Project Zero Prize, offers significant rewards to anyone who can achieve remote code execution on Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X smartphones by knowing only their email address and phone number.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Related: Google Pays $25,000 Reward for Critical Chrome Flaw

Related: Chrome 56 Patches 51 Vulnerabilities

Related: Google Patches 74 Vulnerabilities in Android

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

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.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

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...

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...

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...

CISO Conversations

Joanna Burkey, CISO at HP, and Kevin Cross, CISO at Dell, discuss how the role of a CISO is different for a multinational corporation...

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...