In July 2014, Google launched its first reward program for hackers and security experts under the name of
Project Zero
. A few hours ago they launched an ad in which through the Project Zero program,
Google offers a reward of $ 200,000 to that user capable of breaking the security of a Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P
.
The Project Zero program basically consists in offering some kind of reward to those users capable of breaking the security of any of Google's products or services. This serves as a motivation for those security experts who will see their time and efforts in some way appreciated.
Google Project Zero offers a reward of $ 200,000 to break the security of the Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P.
The program has certain rules that participants must follow. The first restriction is the nationality of the participants, since they have excluded the following locations: Italy, Brazil, Quebec, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Sudan.
Another of the rules is that the hacker
can only use an email or an SMS to infect the victim
. For this, a Gmail e-mail address and a telephone number will be provided, where the victim will open the e-mail or SMS. This complicates things a lot, since the vulnerability found should allow to execute code remotely and thus take control of the device.
It is a difficult challenge, where in principle only the most experts could achieve some result. But to motivate participation, Google has proposed a series of very rewarding rewards, consisting of:
$ 200,000 for first place
, $ 100,000 for the second and rewards of up to $ 50,000 for those users who discover critical vulnerabilities that despite not conform to the requirements of the program, be of help.
This type of rewards for finding security flaws is very common, companies like Facebook also use these programs to improve their security. You can find all the information of the contest in
this link
(in English)
.