Leet Chrome bug finders can bag $1337 reward from Google

by Graham Cluley on January 29, 2010 | Comments Off

Filed Under: Google, 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 has worked in the computer security industry for more than 20 years, developing anti-virus software and doing quite a lot of talking about internet threats. He's won awards for his blogging, but is proudest of the text adventure games he wrote when he was still wearing short trousers. You can learn more about those (the games, not the trousers) at grahamcluley.com. Send Graham an email, subscribe to his updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and App.net, and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.