Google paid whopping $8.7 Million to bug reporters, Aman Pandey from Indore receives highest bounty

• Google has an Android vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) under which its pays researchers who report bugs and vulnerabilities in the Google’s software.
• Google made a special mention of Aman Gupta who emerged as the top researcher reporting 232 vulnerabilities in the firm’s programs and software and has been disbursed with a staggering $1,57,000 million in lieu of that.
• Aman Pandey is an Indore-based tech entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of ‘Bugsmirror’. Bugsmirror help big tech firms as Google and Microsoft to spot viruses and bugs in their software and strengthen cybersecurity for their users.

Android owner Google stated in a recent blogpost that in 2021, it paid researchers USD 8.7 million as a part of its vulnerability Rewards Program. Researchers, often known as bug hunters, are the ones that point out flaws and vulnerabilities in IT firms’ systems. Bug hunters from all over the world joined this bug hunting exercise.

Google made special effort to express gratitude in a post to all the researches that helped it to keep its programs bug-free and made a mention of Indian researcher named Aman Pandey for spotting errors in the Android operating system and submitting them to the organization. The Indian techie won USD 1,57,000 from Google’s bug bounty programme for reporting more than 232 unique security flaws.

The Android Vulnerability Reward Programme (VRP) nearly doubled its total pay-outs in 2021, awarding nearly $3 million in awards, including the biggest pay-out in Android VRP history: a $157,000 reward for an exploit chain discovered in Android.

Aman Pandey is CEO of Bugs mirror, who is situated in Indore, India. He is recognised by Google for being the best researcher and receiving the highest bounty prize. For then knowledge, Google has a Vulnerability Reward Program in which bug finders who discover sensitive problems in Google’s software are rewarded handsomely.

“Last year, Pandey of the Bugsmirror Team surged to the top of our researcher rankings, submitting 232 vulnerabilities in 2021! Aman has reported over 280 genuine vulnerabilities to the Android VRP since their initial report in 2019 and has been an integral part of our program’s success “According to Google’s report.

Pandey is a graduate of the National Institute of Technology in Bhopal, and his company was legally incorporated in January 2021. Bugmirror assists companies such as Apple, Google, and others in improving their security systems and averting malware assaults. Furthermore, Google has expressed gratitude to the entire research community for their efforts in detecting problems and reporting them to the firm.

Google also introduced the Android Chipset Security Reward Program in 2021, under which it paid USD 2,96,000 for more than 220 distinct vulnerabilities.

According to the official blog post, the Chrome VRP also achieved some new records this year, with 115 Chrome VRP researchers receiving $3.3 million in VRP prizes for 333 unique Chrome security bug reports submitted in 2021 and  the contributions benefit not only Chrome, but the entire web by improving the security of other Chromium-based browsers.