Get bug hunting: Mozilla extends bounty to apps

Mozilla has extended its bug bounty to cover its web applications.

The open-source developer already offers up to $US3,000 for serious flaws in Firefox, and has previously paid out for a few web app bugs, but wants to formalise the scheme to incentivise researchers.

"We want to encourage the discovery of security issues within our web applications with the goal of keeping our users safe," said Chris Lyon, director of infrastructure security, in a post on the Mozilla blog.

"We also want to reward security researchers for their efforts with the hope of furthering constructive security research," he added.

Mozilla will pay $US500 for high severity bugs and $US3,000 for "extraordinary" flaws. It will initially only pay out for a select few applications on certain sites, but still asks researchers to hand in vulnerabilities found in other apps.

"If you find an issue with a site which is not 'officially' part under the web application bug bounty, we would still like to know," Mozilla says on the bug bounty page, which lists the qualifying applications.

"If the bug is extraordinary, we might still consider the bug to be nominated for a bounty. In the past we have paid for interesting bugs which are outside of normal policy."

Google extended its bug bounty to websites last month, but is yet to include apps, while Microsoft refuses to pay security researchers for turning in vulnerabilities.

This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk