Google Paid Out $458,000 at Live Hacking Event

Google handed out $458,000 in bug bounty rewards at this year’s bugSWAT hacking event, held during the ESCAL8 conference.

During the event, 38 top bug hunters participated in training, knowledge exchange, and live-hacking sessions targeting AI, Android, and Google Cloud. A total of 107 bug reports were submitted over the three-day event, Google says.

The bugSWAT event was accompanied by the launch of Google’s new AI Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP), in which the internet giant offers rewards of up to $20,000 for vulnerabilities leading to victim account or data modifications.

Building on the 2023 Abuse VRP extension covering issues and flaws in Google’s AI systems, the AI VRP does not cover prompt injections, jailbreaks, and alignment issues, which can be reported directly to Google, using functionality built into each product.

The ESCAL8 conference, held in New Mexico in early October, had nearly 200 attendees, including ...