Google’s courageous bug bounty hunter program is paying off.
The online giant paid a total of roughly $10,000 to developers, researchers, and general enthusiasts who were able to spot vulnerabilities in what would have been the final release of the Chrome 12 Web browser.
In exchange, Google was able to patch those holes and make the launch of the software as stable as possible.
The biggest winner was one Sergey Glazunov, who collected a cool $3,133. Google said Glazunov spotted a threatening glitch in Chrome’s Javascript engine which, when addressed, had a chain reaction that allowed the company to find several more bugs.
“It deserves a more detailed write-up at a later date,” said Chrome Security Team employee Jerome Kersey.
Other amounts paid were more standard numbers, such as $2,000 to a man who found another high-risk bug, $1,000 for a medium-risk security hole, and 500 clams for a glitch that affected the browser’s functionality but posed no security risk.
There was also a $1337 payment for the leet guy who found a problem with the way Chrome handled certain types of browser extensions.
Chrome 12, which was released to the public yesterday, has a slew of enhanced features include support for hardware-accelerated 3D effects, new features for Adobe Flash Player, and quicker access to Web apps.
