Mozilla Bug Bounty

CRM reported A German computer researcher has been paid $2,500 by Mozilla as a thank you for pointing out five flaws in its browser. Michael Krax was paid $500 per bug and got a free Mozilla T-shirt.

The payments were made as part of Mozilla's "bug bounty" program which offers incentives for users to identify flaws in the software.

"We developed the bug bounty program to encourage and award community members who identify unknown bugs in the software," said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering at the Mozilla Foundation.

"This program is one of the many ways in which the Mozilla Foundation produces safe and secure software for its users."

The system was set up last year and Krax is the fifth person to receive an award. Mozilla released a new version of its Firefox browser last week which fixed an animated GIF flaw.

Information Week reported Michael Krax, who lives in Germany, received five bug bounties for a total of $2,500, Thursday. The bugs identified by Krax, said Mozilla, related to chrome privileges. Chrome is developer-speak for the parts of the user interface outside of a window's content area, such as toolbars and menus.

Mozilla's Bug Bounty program began in 2004, and was seeded with money contributed by Linspire (formerly known as Lindows) and venture capitalist Mark Shuttleworth.