Introducing the Google Play Security Reward Program

Posted by Renu Chaudhary, Android Security and Rahul Mishra, Program Manager

We have long enjoyed a close relationship with the security research community. To recognize the valuable external contributions that help us keep our users safe online, we maintain reward programs for Google-developed websites and apps, for Chrome and Chrome OS, and for the latest version of Android running on Pixel devices. These programs have been a success and helped uncover hundreds of vulnerabilities, while also paying out millions of dollars to participating security researchers and research teams.

Today, we’re introducing the Google Play Security Reward Program to incentivize security research into popular Android apps available on Google Play. Through our collaboration with independent bug bounty platform, HackerOne, we’ll enable security researchers to submit an eligible vulnerability to participating developers, who are listed in the program rules. After the vulnerability is addressed, the eligible researcher submits a report to the Play Security Reward Program to receive a monetary reward from Google Play.

With the ongoing success of our other reward programs, we invite developers and the research community to work together with us on proactively improving the security of some of the most popular Android apps on Google Play.

The program is limited to a select number of developers at this time to get initial feedback. Developers can contact their Google Play partner manager to show interest. All developers will benefit when bugs are discovered because we will scan all apps for them and deliver security recommendations to the developers of any affected apps. For more information, visit the Play Security Reward Program on HackerOne.