Google to open up Pwnium rewards program year-round

Google has announced that it will change its Pwnium program, which rewards hackers for revealing exploits for the Chrome browser. Instead of an annual event, Pwnium will become an ongoing program.

The Pwnium program was created by Google to detect security vulnerabilities in its Chrome browser. Every year, the internet company hosted an event where hackers got the chance to put Chrome’s security to the test. Showing working exploits was rewarded by Google, after which Chrome’s development team was given the chance to plug the uncovered holes. The rewards were increased year on year. Last year the ‘prize pool’ amounted to no less than $ 2.71828 million, an amount that refers to the mathematical e-constant.

Google has now announced that the Pwnium program is undergoing a major overhaul. For example, there will no longer be separate Pwnium events, but there will be a switch to an ongoing program as part of the so-called Chrome Reward Program. This gives security researchers and hackers the opportunity to report a vulnerability in Chrome to Google at any time. The reward system also remains stable, although Google has raised the highest reward for a bug report to $ 50,000, approximately 44,000 euros.

According to Google, the new setup for Pwnium prevents hackers and researchers from ‘saving’ found bugs until the next event is held, at the risk that other researchers have found the same vulnerability. Google, in turn, benefits from the fact that bugs raised can be fixed faster in Chrome.