Following in the footsteps of Mozilla, Google issued a statement yesterday in their Chromium blog that they are implementing a reward system for developers who find bugs in the Google Chrome web browser in an attempt to lure more users in the Chromium community.
While Mozilla offers up to $500 for bug reports, Google will offer a base reward of $500 to anyone who submits an eligible bug. If a user finds a severe or clever bug, Google will pay up $1337 (surely appealing to all of our inner geeks) to the developer who discovers it.
Flaws must be submitted through the Chromium bug tracker, and all submissions will be considered by a panel of engineers. That includes bugs in Chromium, Chrome and plug-ins such as Google Gears.
The statement claims that some of the most interesting security bugs were discovered by third party developers, and that by offering such an incentive system, the browser wil be more secure. This will also be an ongoing program, with no ending deadline. Participating researchers are asked not to publicly reveal the bug prior to reporting to Google: “responsible disclosure is a two-way street and Google admits their job will be to fix the reported issues in a reasonable time frame.”
This is definitely a good thing for open source developers, as there are definitely many open source applications which are maintained by people who receive no money for doing so.
As posted on Technologizer, a bug has been reported by many companies using Microsoft Office 2003, causing protected files to become inaccessible. Microsoft’s Rights Management Service, a technology used to control access to sensitive documents, was found to be locking files from use. When trying to open a document protected by RMS, users would receive an error telling them to contact their system administrator.
The bug was found to be present in Office 2003′s Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word; Office 2007 and 2010 are in the clear. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the bug was caused by an expired Information Rights Management (IRM) certificate. Microsoft has released hotfix for the bug and has posted it here.
RMS is a way for companies to encrypt and selectively limit access to documents and specific actions within them. Companies can use it to set usage rights and permissions through policies embedded directly into the files themselves. It can be used to decide what groups can decrypt them, under what conditions decryption is allowed to occur, whether a user is allowed to print, copy, edit, or do other actions within the files, and many other things. The technology is only usable with RMS-enabled applications, such as Office, SharePoint, and Internet Explorer.
Firefox is the award winning next generation browser from Mozilla. Firefox empowers you to browse faster, more safely, and more efficiently than with any other browser. Make the switch today – Firefox imports your Favorites, settings and other information, so you have nothing to lose. Stop annoying popup ads in their tracks with Firefox’s built in popup blocker. View more than one web page in a single window with this time saving feature. Open links in the background so that they’re ready for viewing when you’re ready to read them. Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business.
Source: Changelog
Download: Firefox 3.6 Beta 4
Bug Fixes: Click Here
