Bug bounty programs benefit companies by making use of ethical hackers who uncover bugs in their codes. When hackers discover vulnerabilities, they produce reports that outline the bug’s severity and details. This information helps developers in verifying exposure and improving remediation time.
10 years ago, Google launched its Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP) with a goal to establish a channel for security researchers to report bugs to Google and offer an efficient way for them to thank them for helping make Google, its users, and the Internet a safer place.
Throughout the past 10 years, Google partnered with the security researcher community to identify and fix thousands of vulnerabilities.
Thanks to these incredible researchers, Vulnerability Reward Programs across Google continued to grow and, in 2021 alone, Google awarded a record breaking $8,700,000 in vulnerability rewards — with researchers donating over $300,000 of their rewards to a charity of their choice.
Google also launched bughunters.google.com in 2021, a public researcher portal dedicated to keeping Google products and the internet safe and secure. This new platform brings all of Google’s VRPs (Google, Android, Abuse, Chrome, and Google Play) closer together and provides a single intake form, making security bug submission easier than ever. This new Bug Hunter’s portal offers:
- More opportunities for interaction and a bit of healthy competition through gamification, per-country leaderboards, awards/badges for certain bugs, and more!
- A more functional and aesthetically pleasing leaderboard, because a lot of researchers are using their achievements in VRPs to find jobs!
- Streamlined publication process which makes it easier to publish bug reports.
With the launch of the new Bug Hunters portal, Google plans to continue improving its platform. And here’s your chance to learn the fundamentals of security by following the Security Engineer Learning Path which guides you through a curated collection of on-demand courses, labs, and skill badges that provide you with real-world, hands-on experience using Google Cloud technologies essential to the cloud security professional role.
Use Code: 1q-whitehat-10 for free credits!
