If you’re on the Internet right now you probably but definitely should have had some thougths about your data security. There are such a wide range of ways for your data to be mined, leaked and spread. Google have always had security in mind when developing the Chrome browser, that is set to continue with the rewards for reporting security bugs set to increase.
The Google Security Blog post has the details. What I found quite astounding is the volume of reports that have resulted in over US$5 Million payout to researchers.
If you’re keen to get among the dollars then there’s a lot of rules for the program, but the wrap up in the blog post is:
highlights include tripling the maximum baseline reward amount from $5,000 to $15,000 and doubling the maximum reward amount for high quality reports from $15,000 to $30,000.
There’s also an increased focus on Chromebooks and Chromebox devices. This is to address some of the guest mode exploits that have been located in the past and to ensure that users, their devices and data remain protected.
we’re increasing our standing reward to $150,000 for exploit chains that can compromise a Chromebook or Chromebox with persistence in guest mode.
Perhaps most important to many of our readers is the change in Play Store security rewards program. Discovering and reporting remote code execution will earn you US$20,000. Theft of insecure private data will bag you US$3,000 and locating access to protected app components is now worth US$3,000 to you.
Personally I’m really happy with Google for offering higher rewards to their responsible developers for protecting users. Ultimately though, it’s on users to do everything they can to protect themselves.
