Google Announces $1 Million Reward For Pixel Bug Bounty Program

Security researchers have a new offer from Google. The tech giant is giving away $1 million as awards for finding bugs on Google Pixel devices. Unique bugs found on the Pixel devices can harm user data and needs to be stomped. Security Researchers need to break into the Google Titan M secure element to find the bugs.

Google Bug Bounty Program

In addition, Google is also offering a 50 percent bonus for researchers who are able to find a vulnerability on 'specific developer preview versions of Android'. This would put the overall bounty amount to $1.5 million. But this would again require cracking into the Google Titan M, which is similar to the Apple iPhone Secure Elementa.

When Google first rolled out the bug bounty program for Android devices, the highest bounty amount was $38,000. Google says " We will reward extra for a full exploit chain (typically multiple vulnerabilities chained together) that demonstrates arbitrary code execution, data exfiltration, or a lock screen bypass."

Google Pixel Vulnerability

Google Pixel smartphones recently had a security compromise with the Camera app, which allowed hackers to click images and record videos without the user's knowledge. The vulnerability was also found on certain Samsung smartphones as well. The massive security lapse has affected millions of smartphone users.

Once the bug was found, Google released a patch to fix it. Now, the search giant rolled out the new bounty program to enhance the security levels on Pixel devices. And it looks like Google is matching Apple with the rewards for finding the bugs. Apple too is giving iPhone to security researchers to dig out malicious hackers to track the flaws and vulnerabilities on smartphones.

At the same time, Microsoft also has a bug bounty program called the Azure Security Lab, where experts are asked to work in environments to make enhance Cloud security. Researchers under Microsoft's Azure bug bounty program are rewarded with $40,000.