Google Pays Researcher Record $112,500 for Android Flaw

Google has awarded its highest-ever bug bounty for an Android flaw, the company announced this week. The $112,500 reward was paid to a researcher who submitted the first working remote exploit chain since the Android Security Rewards (ASR) program expanded in June 2017.

Guang Gong, from the Alpha Team at Qihoo 360 Technology, submitted his report in August. The exploit chain he found includes two bugs: CVE-2017-5116 and CVE-2017-14904. The first is a V8 engine bug used to get remote code execution in the sandboxed Chrome render process. The second, a bug in Android's libgralloc module, is used to escape from Chrome's sandbox.

Together, the exploit chain can be used to inject arbitrary code into system_server by accessing a malicious URL in Chrome. Gong's findings earned him $105,000 from ASR, the highest reward in the history of the program. He was also given $7,500 from the Chrome Rewards program.

The full set of issues Gong discovered was addressed in the December 2017 monthly security update, and all devices with security patches of 2017-12-05 or later are protected. Pixel devices and partner devices using A/B updates will automatically install the fixes when restarted.

Read more details here.