Google Broadens Bug Bounties To Include Web App Security 50
n0-0p writes "Google just announced they will pay between $500 and $3133.70 for security bugs found in any of their web services, such as Search, YouTube, and Gmail. This appears to be an expansion of the program they already had in place for Chrome security bugs. 'We've seen a sustained increase in the number of high quality reports from researchers, and their combined efforts are contributing to a more secure Chromium browser for millions of users.' The rules and qualification details were posted today at the Google Online Security Blog."
Does this imply.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bug economy (Score:5, Interesting)
A story from the past...
A Former Employer Who Shall Not Be Named had a product about to go golden-master, and wanted every employee in the company to participate in the final round of testing. Then the pointy-haired bosses got an idea! During the last round of testing, they put up a bounty of twenty dollars for each P3, fifty dollars for each P2, and a hundred dollars for each P1 bug found. However, the pointy-hairs decreed QA and Dev were excluded, and in the same breath decreed that QA and Dev would be working overtime.
An underground economy of bugs immediately sprang up. QA guys would find bugs and quietly share them with tech support/sales engineers/etc. Devs would notice (and it was whispered, though never proven, create) bugs and quietly share them with IT. And the proceeds would be split between the ineligible employees and the eligible.
Over fifty thousand in bounties were paid. Then the pointy-hairs got wind of what was going on.
And that was the end of that.
Irrelevant to the story at hand, though, I'm quite sure...