Researchers paid for Chrome bugs

2010-02-01

Helen Martin

Virus Bulletin, UK

Editor: Helen Martin

Abstract

Google invites security researchers to probe its browser.

Google is inviting security researchers to seek out bugs in its Chrome web browser. Researchers reporting genuine vulnerabilities to the company will be rewarded with $500 per bug, with the reward rising to a maximum of $1,337 if the vulnerability reported is deemed by a panel to be particularly critical. The company hopes that by encouraging external researchers to probe the browser it will be able to improve security for its users. ‘The more people involved in scrutinizing Chromium’s code and behaviour, the more secure our millions of users will be,’ read a posting on the company’s blog.

The idea of offering rewards for vulnerabilities is not new, and in its announcement of the programme Google’s Chromium team raised a hat tip to the Mozilla Foundation whose Security Bug Bounty Program offers a similar set of rewards.

Bugs in the Chrome and Chromium builds of the browser can be reported via an online bug-tracking system. Full details can be found in the Google blog at http://blog.chromium.org/2010/01/encouraging-more-chromium-security.html.

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