Google follows a lucrative bug bounty program in which the company awards millions of dollars in reward to ethical hackers and security experts for finding loopholes in Google’s algorithm. This ensures the security of Google from unethical hackers.
Google has recently paid an Uruguayan teenager $36,000 for finding a serious security hole which would have allowed hackers to make changes in company’s internal systems. 17-year-old Ezequiel Pereira discovered this flaw reported to Google about this. He shared about the awrd he got on Twitter.
Earlier this year I found a Remote Command Execution bug in non-production environments in Google App Engine, and I got 36 thousand dollars!
Now the bug is fixed and I can finally publish my write-up about it: https://t.co/LyCUL9eEq7— Ezequiel Pereira (@epereiralopez) May 20, 2018
“I found something almost immediately that was worth $500 and it just felt so amazing. So I decided to just keep trying ever since then,” he said in a recent interview. “It feels really good – I’m glad that I found something that was so important,” he added.
Pereira is fond of computers and has been learning coding from the age of 11. His interest in learning different programming languages made him regularly participate in coding and programming contests. In fact, he went on a trip to Google’s headquarters in California, back in 2016 in a programming event.
This is Pereira’s 5th accepted bug and has been most lucrative for him. Earlier, Google gifted him $10,000 for a similar work which encouraged him to follow his interest.
Such practices help companies to remain secured and ethical hackers get inspired by such examples. In short, it is a win-win situation for everyone.
