Google will pay you to find security flaws in its open source projects

• Tyler Lee
• 2 years ago

Many tech companies offer a bug bounty program. This is where companies will pay users a bounty if they are able to discover a bug or security flaw in their products, where the payout will depend on the severity of the bug, but generally speaking it’s a good way for developers and white hat hackers to try and earn themselves some extra income.

Google is no exception to this, but the good news for developers and white hat hackers is that the company is expanding on its bug bounty program to cover its open source projects, meaning that there are now more avenues that users can look into to potentially earn more money.

According to Google, the reason for this new program is because of an increase in hackers targeting open source software. It makes sense because if the source code is available to everyone, it can increase the chance of bugs and flaws being found and exploited and potentially affecting more users, especially if there are multiple forks of said software.

As we said earlier, the payouts will depend on what users find and its severity, with rewards ranging from as low as $100 and going up to $31,337 and will cover Google platforms like Fuchsia OS. If you think that this is something you might be interested in, head on over to Google’s Bug Hunter page for more details on how to participate as well as the rules that you’ll have to follow.

Source: Android Police