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 bug hunters, CTF players, Key Opinion Formers (KOFs), and students.
According to Google, eight teams participated in its Hackceler8 capture the flag (CTF) event, solving visually designed, security-focused tasks. The eight were selected from more than 250 teams that registered for the online qualification round.
At the conference, Google also held a two-day intro-level cybersecurity workshop called init.g(mexico). Over 60 students from local universities attended workshops and talks on various topics, including offensive and web security, and cryptography.
“All sessions were specifically designed to inspire students from varied groups to pursue careers in cybersecurity,” Google notes.
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