Google and Microsoft Increase Bug Bounty Payouts by 100 and 50 Percent
Well, there’s some good news for hackers and bug bounty hunters!
Both tech giants Google and Microsoft have raised the value of the payouts they offer security researchers, white hat hackers and bug hunters who find high severity flaws in their products.
While Microsoft has just doubled its top reward from $15,000 to $30,000, Google has raised its high reward from $20,000 to $31,337, which is a 50 percent rise plus a bonus $1,337 or ‘leet’ award.
In past few years, every major company, from Apple to P*rnHub and Netgear , had started Bug Bounty Programs to encourage hackers and security researchers to find and responsibly report bugs in their services and get rewarded.
But since more and more bug hunters participating in bug bounty programs at every big tech company, common and easy-to-spot bugs are hardly left now, and if any, they hardly make any severe impact.
Sophisticated and remotely exploitable vulnerabilities are a thing now, which takes more time and effort than ever to discover.
So, it was needed to encourage researchers in helping companies find high-severity vulnerabilities that have become harder to identify.
