VRP 2025 Year in Review

Publisher excerpt From Google Online Security Blog

Posted by Dirk Göhmann, Tony Mendez, and the Vulnerability Rewards Program Team 2025 marked a special year in the history of vulnerability rewards and bug bounty programs at Google: our 15th anniversary 🎉🎉🎉! Originally started in 2010, our vulnerability reward program (VRP) has seen constant additions and expansions over the past decade and a half, clearly indicating the value the programs under this umbrella contribute to the safety and security of Google and its users, but also highlighting their acceptance by the external research community, without which such programs cannot function. Coming back to 2025 specifically, our VRP once again confirmed the ongoing value of engaging with the external security research community to make Google and its products safer. This was more evident than ever as we awarded over $17 million (an all-time high and more than 40% increase compared to 2024!) to over 700 researchers based in countries around the globe – across all of our programs. Vulnerability Reward Program 2025 in Numbers Want to learn more about who’s reporting to the VRP? Check out our Leaderboard on the Google Bug Hunters site. VRP Highlights in 2025 In 2025 we made a series of changes and improvements to our VRP and related initiatives, and continued to invest in the security research community through a series of focused events: The new, dedicated AI VRP was launched, underscoring the importance of this space to Google and its relevance for external researchers. Pr…

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