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— Christopher Null is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.
Stop with the kvetching and start earning some money.
Both Mozilla (which makes Firefox) and Google (which makes the Chrome browser) are offering sizable bounties for major bugs discovered in their software. In fact, the two companies are now engaging in a sort of bug bounty arms race, with bounties now topping $3,000 per bug on both systems.
Earlier this week, Mozilla raised its highest bug bounty to $3,000 (plus a T-shirt!), from $500. Google responded Tuesday night by raising its bounty to a cheeky $3,Ed hardy underwear,133.70, an homage to the word “ELITE” in hacker lingo, up from its earlier bounty of $1,337. (If you don’t get the reference, ask someone under 25.)
Google says its so-called Chromium Security Reward Program has already helped find several critical bugs, and it adds that users seem genuinely motivated to seek out and meticulously report problems thanks to the potential financial rewards available to bug-hunters. Alas, few seem to be getting rich from the bug searching. So far, Google has paid out only a bit more than 20 bounties of varying sizes, and only one has hit the top-tier amount to date. Mozilla hasn’t revealed the number of bounties it has paid out.
You can find additional details on the bug bounty programs from Mozilla and from Google.
Unfortunately, if you have complaints about Internet Explorer or Safari, the other two major Web browsers, you won’t earn any cash for reporting them to the powers that be. However, you can still do so out of the goodness of your own heart. You’ll find detailed information on how bugs can be reported for these browsers at the above links.
Then I guess you can go out and buy yourself a fruit pop.
Tired of complaining about your Web browser crashing or otherwise acting up?
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