After a spate of sophisticated attacks from hackers in China, Google is making security one of its main concerns with the adoption of a new ongoing reward programme. The programme has the search giant offering rewards between $500 (approx. R3 750) and $1 337 (just over R10 000) for every security flaw found and reported on their Chrome web browser.

 

According to a post by Chris Evans of Google’s Chrome security division, “Some of the most interesting security bugs we’ve fixed have been reported by researchers external to the Chromium project. Thanks to the collaborative efforts...Chromium security is stronger and our users are safer.” This has led to the establishment of the new programme that is based on Mozilla’s vulnerability reward programme.

 

The base price for a reported bug is $500, but depending on the severity of the security flaw the reward goes up to $1 337. Although Google does encourage everyone to participate in the programme, it won’t pay the rewards out to you if you reside in a country that the US government “has imposed the highest levels of export restriction [on] (e.g. Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria)”.

 

In related news, Google will as of 1 March be dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) starting with Google Docs and Google Sites, meaning you’ll have to upgrade to IE7 at least or move on to a new browser altogether if you want to keep on working with these.