Google Upgrades VRP Bug Bounty Platform

10th Anniversary - VRP Upgrade

Google announced this week on its official security blog that the current bug bounty program will be rebranded for its anniversary. As with other vulnerability disclosure platforms, a gamification model will be used to further motivate the research community.

Gamification is the transfer of game-typical elements and processes into non-game contexts with the aim of changing behavior and increasing motivation among users.

Google justifies the expansion of the program for the anniversary by saying that security researchers would use it for applications or, for example, would be more motivated by a game-like system. Google goes this way to identify more vulnerabilities as well as to make new recruiting opportunities by statistical information evaluation as it is practiced e.g. by other vulnerability reproting platforms already for years. Basically, the approach to create a playful platform is a great idea, as long as the vulnerability disclosure business is not also damaged by the playful handling as a technology of american corporations in connection with sales, commercials or promotion business.

In the official blog entry, the company looks back on 10 successful years of bug bounty business and at the same time wants to continue the program successfully for the next 10 years after the anniversary.

In the new style, for example, new leaderboard functions as well as other statistical evaluation options such as individual ratings by class will be introduced. This should increase the incoming vulnerability reports when the program is used by security researchers.

In the future, the google team wants to centrally channel the reporting process of the various google products via a formular.

References:
https://bughunters.google.com
https://bughunters.google.com/leaderboard
https://security.googleblog.com/2021/07/a-new-chapter-for-googles-vulner...