Bug bounty hunters rake it in as incidence of cyber attacks shoots up

Last year Google paid $605,000 to ethical hackers to detect and fix vulnerabilities

As the incidence of cyber attacks shoots up, tech firms are looking to ethical hackers and independent researchers to detect vulnerabilities and fix them. For example, last year Google was able to identify and fix 2,900 security issues across Android, Chrome and Play, thanks to its Vulnerability Reward Programmes (VRPs), which incentivises ethical hackers to discover bugs.

Google awarded its highest bug bounty ever of $605,000 for a critical exploit chain report last year. And it paid a total of $12 million to researchers taking part in VRPs in 2022, which is six times higher than what it paid in