Microsoft announces bug bounty program, awards up to $250K

Microsoft which has been running a bug bounty scheme that rewards users for finding flaws in the Windows OS, is expanding its bounty program. The bounty program is named "Microsoft Bounty Program" and will launch on July 26, 2017.

This time, awards go all the way up to $250,000 for anyone who’s able to discover exploits in Microsoft Hyper-V, the company’s virtualization software. The rewards start at $500 and would be handed out to "any critical or important class remote code execution, elevation of privilege, or design flaws that compromise a customer’s privacy and security.”

Mitigation Bypass and Microsoft Edge are the focus areas and attract bounties of up to $100,000 and $15,000 respectively. Windows Defender Application Guard is also a new focus, as it was added to the program just this week. There's $30,000 on offer for those who find critical faults in the slow Windows Insider release track.

If any Microsoft employee finds an issue first, then the company would still offer the award to the first person outside the company who details it- but it will only be 10 percent of the maximum amount offered, meaning it only goes up to $25,000.

Microsoft says that it will keep running the bounty program for an indefinite time frame in its current form. Here's the full list of categories that Microsoft is interested in and their respective bounties.