Leet Chrome bug finders can bag $1337 reward from Google

by Graham Cluley on January 29, 2010 | Comments Off

Filed Under: Vulnerability

Google has launched a new initiative to encourage vulnerability researchers to report any security holes they find in the Google Chrome browser.

Anyone who find a bug in Chrome or Chromium, the open source code used as the foundations of Chrome, can receive between $500 and $1337 for reporting the problem to Google.

Bugs felt to be "particularly severe or particularly clever" will receive the larger amount, which is a humorous play on "leet speak".

Leet reward from Google

The initiative is also designed to encourage bug hunters to report vulnerabilities responsibly, rather than reveal them to the world (and potentially to malicious hackers) before the Google browser has had a chance to be fixed. Anything which deters irresponsible disclosure of security problems is a good thing from my point of view.

You can find more details on the Chromium blog.

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About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.