Home
Apps
Apps News
Google Play Security Rewards Program Offers Bug Bounties for Third Party Mobile Apps

Google Play Security Rewards Program Offers Bug Bounties for Third-Party Mobile Apps

By Reuters | Updated: 20 October 2017 14:09 IST

Highlights

Google will partner with HackerOne, a bug bounty management website
Google says it cares about the overall health of the Android ecosystem
It already offers its own Android security rewards programme

Google is offering security experts a bounty to identify Android app flaws as the Alphabet unit seeks to wipe out bugs from its Google Play store.

Each flaw will score at least $1,000 under the programme announced on Thursday to back up automated checks that have failed to block malware and other problems that security experts say infect the 8-year-old app store far more than Apple's rival App Store.

Google will partner with HackerOne, a bug bounty programme management website, to target a list of apps and flaws such as those that allow a hacker to redirect a user to a phishing website or infect a gadget with a virus.

Software scans cannot match a person's ability to discover "a truly creative hack," Vineet Buch, director of product management for Google Play Apps and Games, said in an interview.

The Google Play Security Reward Program effectively sponsors research into software created by other companies. Bug bounties by Microsoft Corp , Apple and Alphabet have been awarded only for tracing flaws in their own software.

"We don't just care about our own apps, but rather the overall health of the ecosystem," Buch said. "It's like offering a reward for a missing person even if you don't know who the missing person is personally."

Google did not reveal the funding for its programme, but said it would start small.

Google's bug bounty programme for its Android mobile operating system, launched in June 2015, doled out $1.5 million for hundreds of vulnerability reports over its first two years.

© Thomson Reuters 2017

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.