An Empirical Study of Vulnerability Rewards Programs

We perform an empirical study to better understand two well-known vulnerability rewards programs, or VRPs, which software vendors use to encourage community participation in finding and responsibly disclosing software vulnerabilities. The Chrome VRP has cost approximately $580,000 over 3 years and has resulted in 501 bounties paid for the identification of security vulnerabilities. The Firefox VRP has cost approximately $570,000 over the last 3 years and has yielded 190 bounties. 28% of Chrome’s patched vulnerabilities appearing in security advisories over this period, and 24% of Firefox’s, are the result of VRP contributions. Both programs appear economically efficient, comparing favorably to the cost of hiring full-time security researchers. The Chrome VRP features low expected payouts accompanied by high potential payouts, while the Firefox VRP features fixed payouts. Finding vulnerabilities for VRPs typically does not yield a salary comparable to a full-time job; the common case for recipients of rewards in either program is that they have received only one reward. Firefox has far more critical-severity vulnerabilities than Chrome, which we believe is attributable to an architectural difference between the two browsers.