If you fancy yourself as a regular bug hunter (not the kickass Starship Troopers kind, but the know-it-all tech enthusiast kind) then Google is offering up to $40,000 to anyone who can find bugs and other such exploits in their Android operating system.
Google previously paid out over $1.5 million back in 2014 to those who dug deep beneath the surface of Chrome and discovered minor and major flaws with the browser, with the company now nailing up those wanted posters for bugs found in its Android mobile platform.
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The Android Security Rewards Program will pay cybersecurity researchers between $333 and $40,000 depending upon the severity of the flaw they find, with tech blog Lifars revealing that the latter would be reserved for those who discover a bug that could lead to “a chain of attacks which compromises Android TrustZone or Verified Boot from an installed application.”
Google, via Lifars, revealed the increments in which the payments made by Google would rise depending upon each bug, with them also offering up to 4 times the base pay for any entry log that included both a CTS test and a patch.
Google’s lead of Android Security Adrian Ludwig said that the decision to move the rewards program to Android was made due to “mobile becoming arguably the most important way people connect to the Internet,” with him also stating that Google was looking for independent cybersecurity researchers to look at this as a full-time opportunity.
It always an intelligent move when a company looks to hackers, uh, I mean “cybersecurity researchers” to exploit their flaws in order for them to up their security, and after a successful run with Chrome, this may lead to Google’s making huge improvements in the safety of its Android OS for its users.
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