Category Archives: Online Security Blog

The latest news and insights from Google on security and safety on the Internet

Titan Security Keys – now available in Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK



Security keys provide the strongest protection against phishing attacks. That’s why they are an important feature of the Advanced Protection Program that provides Google’s strongest account protections for users that consider themselves at a higher risk of targeted, sophisticated attacks on their personal or work Google Accounts.

Last year, we made the Titan Security Key bundle with USB-A/NFC and Bluetooth/USB/NFC keys available in Canada, France, Japan, the UK, and the US. Starting today, USB-C Titan Security Keys are available in those countries, and the bundle and USB-C Titan Security Keys are now available on the Google Store in Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.

Titan Security Keys are now available in 10 countries

Security keys use public-key cryptography to verify your identity and URL of the login page so that an attacker can’t access your account even if they have your username or password. Unlike other two-factor authentication (2FA) methods that try to verify your sign-in, security keys support FIDO standards that provide the strongest protection against automated bots, bulk phishing attacks, and targeted phishing attacks.

We highly recommend users at a higher risk of targeted attacks (e.g., political campaign teams, activists, journalists, IT administrators, executives) to get Titan Security Keys and enroll into the Advanced Protection Program (APP). If you’re working in a federal political campaigns team in the US, you can now request free Titan Security Keys via Defending Digital Campaigns and get help enrolling into the APP. Bulk orders are also available for enterprise organizations in select countries.

You can also use Titan Security Keys for any site where FIDO security keys are supported for 2FA, including your personal or work Google Account, 1Password, Bitbucket, Bitfinex, Coinbase, Dropbox, Facebook, GitHub, Salesforce, Stripe, Twitter, and more.

How we fought bad apps and malicious developers in 2019


Posted by Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play + Android App Safety
[Cross-posted from the Android Developers Blog]

Google Play connects users with great digital experiences to help them be more productive and entertained, as well as providing app developers with tools to reach billions of users around the globe. Such a thriving ecosystem can only be achieved and sustained when trust and safety is one of its key foundations. Over the last few years we’ve made the trust and safety of Google Play a top priority, and have continued our investments and improvements in our abuse detection systems, policies, and teams to fight against bad apps and malicious actors.
In 2019, we continued to strengthen our policies (especially to better protect kids and families), continued to improve our developer approval process, initiated a deeper collaboration with security industry partners through the App Defense Alliance, enhanced our machine learning detection systems analyzing an app’s code, metadata, and user engagement signals for any suspicious content or behaviors, as well as scaling the number and the depth of manual reviews. The combination of these efforts have resulted in a much cleaner Play Store:
  • Google Play released a new policy in 2018 to stop apps from unnecessarily accessing privacy-sensitive SMS and Call Log data. We saw a significant, 98% decrease in apps accessing SMS and Call Log data as developers partnered with us to update their apps and protect users. The remaining 2% are comprised of apps that require SMS and Call Log data to perform their core function.
  • One of the best ways to protect users from bad apps is to keep those apps out of the Play Store in the first place. Our improved vetting mechanisms stopped over 790,000 policy-violating app submissions before they were ever published to the Play Store.
  • Similarly to our SMS and Call Log policy, we also enacted a policy to better protect families in May 2019. After putting this in place, we worked with developers to update or remove tens of thousands of apps, making the Play Store a safer place for everyone.
In addition we’ve launched a refreshed Google Play Protect experience, our built-in malware protection for Android devices. Google Play Protect scans over 100B apps everyday, providing users with information about potential security issues and actions they can take to keep their devices safe and secure. Last year, Google Play Protect also prevented more than 1.9B malware installs from non-Google Play sources.
While we are proud of what we were able to achieve in partnership with our developer community, we know there is more work to be done. Adversarial bad actors will continue to devise new ways to evade our detection systems and put users in harm's way for their own gains. Our commitment in building the world's safest and most helpful app platform will continue in 2020, and we will continue to invest in the key app safety areas mentioned in last year’s blog post:
  • Strengthening app safety policies to protect user privacy
  • Faster detection of bad actors and blocking repeat offenders
  • Detecting and removing apps with harmful content and behaviors
Our teams of passionate product managers, engineers, policy experts, and operations leaders will continue to work with the developer community to accelerate the pace of innovation, and deliver a safer app store to billions of Android users worldwide.

Protecting users from insecure downloads in Google Chrome


Today we’re announcing that Chrome will gradually ensure that secure (HTTPS) pages only download secure files. In a series of steps outlined below, we’ll start blocking "mixed content downloads" (non-HTTPS downloads started on secure pages). This move follows a plan we announced last year to start blocking all insecure subresources on secure pages.
Insecurely-downloaded files are a risk to users' security and privacy. For instance, insecurely-downloaded programs can be swapped out for malware by attackers, and eavesdroppers can read users' insecurely-downloaded bank statements. To address these risks, we plan to eventually remove support for insecure downloads in Chrome.
As a first step, we are focusing on insecure downloads started on secure pages. These cases are especially concerning because Chrome currently gives no indication to the user that their privacy and security are at risk.
Starting in Chrome 82 (to be released April 2020), Chrome will gradually start warning on, and later blocking, these mixed content downloads. File types that pose the most risk to users (e.g., executables) will be impacted first, with subsequent releases covering more file types. This gradual rollout is designed to mitigate the worst risks quickly, provide developers an opportunity to update sites, and minimize how many warnings Chrome users have to see.
We plan to roll out restrictions on mixed content downloads on desktop platforms (Windows, macOS, Chrome OS and Linux) first. Our plan for desktop platforms is as follows:

  • In Chrome 81 (released March 2020) and later:
    • Chrome will print a console message warning about all mixed content downloads.
  • In Chrome 82 (released April 2020):
    • Chrome will warn on mixed content downloads of executables (e.g. .exe).
  • In Chrome 83 (released June 2020):
    • Chrome will block mixed content executables
    • Chrome will warn on mixed content archives (.zip) and disk images (.iso).
  • In Chrome 84 (released August 2020):
    • Chrome will block mixed content executables, archives and disk images
    • Chrome will warn on all other mixed content downloads except image, audio, video and text formats.
  • In Chrome 85 (released September 2020):
    • Chrome will warn on mixed content downloads of images, audio, video, and text
    • Chrome will block all other mixed content downloads
  • In Chrome 86 (released October 2020) and beyond, Chrome will block all mixed content downloads.
Example of a potential warning
Chrome will delay the rollout for Android and iOS users by one release, starting warnings in Chrome 83. Mobile platforms have better native protection against malicious files, and this delay will give developers a head-start towards updating their sites before impacting mobile users.
Developers can prevent users from ever seeing a download warning by ensuring that downloads only use HTTPS. In the current version of Chrome Canary, or in Chrome 81 once released, developers can activate a warning on all mixed content downloads for testing by enabling the "Treat risky downloads over insecure connections as active mixed content" flag at chrome://flags/#treat-unsafe-downloads-as-active-content.
Enterprise and education customers can disable blocking on a per-site basis via the existing InsecureContentAllowedForUrls policy by adding a pattern matching the page requesting the download.
In the future, we expect to further restrict insecure downloads in Chrome. We encourage developers to fully migrate to HTTPS to avoid future restrictions and fully protect their users. Developers with questions are welcome to email us at [email protected].

Protecting users from insecure downloads in Google Chrome


Today we’re announcing that Chrome will gradually ensure that secure (HTTPS) pages only download secure files. In a series of steps outlined below, we’ll start blocking "mixed content downloads" (non-HTTPS downloads started on secure pages). This move follows a plan we announced last year to start blocking all insecure subresources on secure pages.
Insecurely-downloaded files are a risk to users' security and privacy. For instance, insecurely-downloaded programs can be swapped out for malware by attackers, and eavesdroppers can read users' insecurely-downloaded bank statements. To address these risks, we plan to eventually remove support for insecure downloads in Chrome.
As a first step, we are focusing on insecure downloads started on secure pages. These cases are especially concerning because Chrome currently gives no indication to the user that their privacy and security are at risk.
Starting in Chrome 82 (to be released April 2020), Chrome will gradually start warning on, and later blocking, these mixed content downloads. File types that pose the most risk to users (e.g., executables) will be impacted first, with subsequent releases covering more file types. This gradual rollout is designed to mitigate the worst risks quickly, provide developers an opportunity to update sites, and minimize how many warnings Chrome users have to see.
We plan to roll out restrictions on mixed content downloads on desktop platforms (Windows, macOS, Chrome OS and Linux) first. Our plan for desktop platforms is as follows:

  • In Chrome 81 (released March 2020) and later:
    • Chrome will print a console message warning about all mixed content downloads.
  • In Chrome 82 (released April 2020):
    • Chrome will warn on mixed content downloads of executables (e.g. .exe).
  • In Chrome 83 (released June 2020):
    • Chrome will block mixed content executables
    • Chrome will warn on mixed content archives (.zip) and disk images (.iso).
  • In Chrome 84 (released August 2020):
    • Chrome will block mixed content executables, archives and disk images
    • Chrome will warn on all other mixed content downloads except image, audio, video and text formats.
  • In Chrome 85 (released September 2020):
    • Chrome will warn on mixed content downloads of images, audio, video, and text
    • Chrome will block all other mixed content downloads
  • In Chrome 86 (released October 2020) and beyond, Chrome will block all mixed content downloads.
Example of a potential warning
Chrome will delay the rollout for Android and iOS users by one release, starting warnings in Chrome 83. Mobile platforms have better native protection against malicious files, and this delay will give developers a head-start towards updating their sites before impacting mobile users.
Developers can prevent users from ever seeing a download warning by ensuring that downloads only use HTTPS. In the current version of Chrome Canary, or in Chrome 81 once released, developers can activate a warning on all mixed content downloads for testing by enabling the "Treat risky downloads over insecure connections as active mixed content" flag at chrome://flags/#treat-unsafe-downloads-as-active-content.
Enterprise and education customers can disable blocking on a per-site basis via the existing InsecureContentAllowedForUrls policy by adding a pattern matching the page requesting the download.
In the future, we expect to further restrict insecure downloads in Chrome. We encourage developers to fully migrate to HTTPS to avoid future restrictions and fully protect their users. Developers with questions are welcome to email us at [email protected].

Say hello to OpenSK: a fully open-source security key implementation



Today, FIDO security keys are reshaping the way online accounts are protected by providing an easy, phishing-resistant form of two-factor authentication (2FA) that is trusted by a growing number of websites, including Google, social networks, cloud providers, and many others. To help advance and improve access to FIDO authenticator implementations, we are excited, following other open-source projects like Solo and Somu, to announce the release of OpenSK, an open-source implementation for security keys written in Rust that supports both FIDO U2F and FIDO2 standards.

Photo of OpenSK developer edition: a Nordic Dongle running the OpenSK firmware on DIY case

By opening up OpenSK as a research platform, our hope is that it will be used by researchers, security key manufacturers, and enthusiasts to help develop innovative features and accelerate security key adoption.

With this early release of OpenSK, you can make your own developer key by flashing the OpenSK firmware on a Nordic chip dongle. In addition to being affordable, we chose Nordic as initial reference hardware because it supports all major transport protocols mentioned by FIDO2: NFC, Bluetooth Low Energy, USB, and a dedicated hardware crypto core. To protect and carry your key, we are also providing a custom, 3D-printable case that works on a variety of printers.

“We’re excited to collaborate with Google and the open source community on the new OpenSK research platform,” said Kjetil Holstad, Director of Product Management at Nordic Semiconductor. “We hope that our industry leading nRF52840’s native support for secure cryptographic acceleration combined with new features and testing in OpenSK will help the industry gain mainstream adoption of security keys.”

While you can make your own fully functional FIDO authenticator today, as showcased in the video above, this release should be considered as an experimental research project to be used for testing and research purposes.


Under the hood, OpenSK is written in Rust and runs on TockOS to provide better isolation and cleaner OS abstractions in support of security. Rust’s strong memory safety and zero-cost abstractions makes the code less vulnerable to logical attacks. TockOS, with its sandboxed architecture, offers the isolation between the security key applet, the drivers, and kernel that is needed to build defense-in-depth. Our TockOS contributions, including our flash-friendly storage system and patches, have all been upstreamed to the TockOS repository. We’ve done this to encourage everyone to build upon the work.


How to get involved and contribute to OpenSK 

To learn more about OpenSK and how to experiment with making your own security key, you can check out our GitHub repository today. With the help of the research and developer communities, we hope OpenSK over time will bring innovative features, stronger embedded crypto, and encourage widespread adoption of trusted phishing-resistant tokens and a passwordless web.

Acknowledgements

We also want to thank our OpenSK collaborators: Adam Langley, Alexei Czeskis, Arnar Birgisson, Borbala Benko, Christiaan Brand, Dirk Balfanz, Dominic Rizzo, Fabian Kaczmarczyck, Guillaume Endignoux, Jeff Hodges, Julien Cretin, Mark Risher, Oxana Comanescu, Tadek Pietraszek

Vulnerability Reward Program: 2019 Year in Review



Our Vulnerability Reward Programs were created to reward researchers for protecting users by telling us about the security bugs they find. Their discoveries help keep our users, and the internet at large, safe. We look forward to even more collaboration in 2020 and beyond.

2019 has been another record-breaking year for us, thanks to our researchers! We paid out over $6.5 million in rewards, doubling what we’ve ever paid in a single year. At the same time our researchers decided to donate an all-time-high of $500,000 to charity this year. That’s 5x the amount we have ever previously donated in a single year. Thanks so much for your hard work and generous giving!
Since 2010, we have expanded our VRPs to cover additional Google product areas, including Chrome, Android, and most recently Abuse. We've also expanded to cover popular third party apps on Google Play, helping identify and disclose vulnerabilities to impacted app developers. Since then we have paid out more than $21 million in rewards*. As we have done in years past, we are sharing our 2019 Year in Review across these programs.
What’s changed in the past year?

  • Chrome’s VRP increased its reward payouts by tripling the maximum baseline reward amount from $5,000 to $15,000 and doubling the maximum reward amount for high quality reports from $15,000 to $30,000. The additional bonus given to bugs found by fuzzers running under the Chrome Fuzzer Program is also doubling to $1,000. More details can be found in their program rules page.
  • Android Security Rewards expanded its program with new exploit categories and higher rewards. The top prize is now $1 million for a full chain remote code execution exploit with persistence which compromises the Titan M secure element on Pixel devices. And if you achieve that exploit on specific developer preview versions of Android, we’re adding in a 50% bonus, making the top prize $1.5 million. See our program rules page for more details around our new exploit categories and rewards.
  • Abuse VRP engaged in outreach and education to increase researchers awareness about the program, presenting an overview of our Abuse program in Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the UK and US.
  • The Google Play Security Reward Program expanded scope to any app with over 100 million installs, resulting in over $650,000 in rewards in the second half of 2019.
  • The Developer Data Protection Reward Program was launched in 2019 to identify and mitigate data abuse issues in Android apps, OAuth projects, and Chrome extensions.
We also had the goal of increasing engagement with our security researchers over the last year at events such as BountyCon in Singapore and ESCAL8 in London. These events not only allow us to get to know each of our bug hunters but also provide a space for bug hunters to meet one another and hopefully work together on future exploits.

A hearty thank you to everyone that contributed to the VRPs in 2019. We are looking forward to increasing engagement even more in 2020 as both Google and Chrome VRPs will turn 10. Stay tuned for celebrations. Follow us on @GoogleVRP

*The total amount was updated on January 28; it previously said we paid out more than $15 million in rewards.

Have an iPhone? Use it to protect your Google Account with the Advanced Protection Program



Phishing—when an online attacker tries to trick you into giving them your username and password—is one of the most common causes of account compromises. We recently partnered with The Harris Poll to survey 500 high-risk users (politicians and their staff, journalists, business executives, activists, online influencers) living in the U.S. Seventy-four percent of them reported having been the target of a phishing attempt or compromised by a phishing attack.

Gmail automatically blocks more than 100 million phishing emails every day and warns people that are targeted by government-backed attackers, but you can further strengthen the security of your Google Account by enrolling in the Advanced Protection Program—our strongest security protections that automatically help defend against evolving methods attackers use to gain access to your personal and work Google Accounts and data.

Security keys are an important feature of the Advanced Protection Program, because they provide the strongest protection against phishing attacks. In the past, you had to separately purchase and carry physical security keys. Last year, we built security keys into Android phones—and starting today, you can activate a security key on your iPhone to help protect your Google Account.

Activating the security key on your iPhone with Google’s Smart Lock app

Security keys use public-key cryptography to verify your identity and URL of the login page, so that an attacker can’t access your account even if they have your username or password. Unlike other two-factor authentication (2FA) methods that try to verify your sign-in, security keys are built with FIDO standards that provide the strongest protection against automated bots, bulk phishing attacks, and targeted phishing attacks. You can learn more about security keys from our Cloud Next ‘19 presentation.


Approving the sign-in to a Google Account with Google’s SmartLock app on an iPhone

On your iPhone, the security key can be activated with Google’s Smart Lock app; on your Android phone, the functionality is built in. The security key in your phone uses Bluetooth to verify your sign-in on Chrome OS, iOS, macOS and Windows 10 devices without requiring you to pair your devices. This helps protect your Google Account on virtually any device with the convenience of your phone.

How to get started

Follow these simple steps to help protect your personal or work Google Account today:
  • Activate your phone’s security key (Android 7+ or iOS 10+)
  • Enroll in the Advanced Protection Program
  • When signing in to your Google Account, make sure Bluetooth is turned on on your phone and the device you’re signing in on.
We also highly recommend registering a backup security key to your account and keeping it in a safe place, so you can get into your account if you lose your phone. You can get a security key from a number of vendors, including Google, with our own Titan Security Key.

If you’re a Google Cloud customer, you can find out more about the Advanced Protection Program for the enterprise on our G Suite Updates blog.

Here’s to stronger account security—right in your pocket.

Securing open-source: how Google supports the new Kubernetes bug bounty



At Google, we care deeply about the security of open-source projects, as they’re such a critical part of our infrastructure—and indeed everyone’s. Today, the Cloud-Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) announced a new bug bounty program for Kubernetes that we helped create and get up and running. Here’s a brief overview of the program, other ways we help secure open-source projects and information on how you can get involved.

Launching the Kubernetes bug bounty program

Kubernetes is a CNCF project. As part of its graduation criteria, the CNCF recently funded the project’s first security audit, to review its core areas and identify potential issues. The audit identified and addressed several previously unknown security issues. Thankfully, Kubernetes already had a Product Security Committee, including engineers from the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) security team, who respond to and patch any newly discovered bugs. But the job of securing an open-source project is never done. To increase awareness of Kubernetes’ security model, attract new security researchers, and reward ongoing efforts in the community, the Kubernetes Product Security Committee began discussions in 2018 about launching an official bug bounty program.

Find Kubernetes bugs, get paid

What kind of bugs does the bounty program recognize? Most of the content you’d think of as ‘core’ Kubernetes, included at https://github.com/kubernetes, is in scope. We’re interested in common kinds of security issues like remote code execution, privilege escalation, and bugs in authentication or authorization. Because Kubernetes is a community project, we’re also interested in the Kubernetes supply chain, including build and release processes that might allow a malicious individual to gain unauthorized access to commits, or otherwise affect build artifacts. This is a bit different from your standard bug bounty as there isn’t a ‘live’ environment for you to test—Kubernetes can be configured in many different ways, and we’re looking for bugs that affect any of those (except when existing configuration options could mitigate the bug). Thanks to the CNCF’s ongoing support and funding of this new program, depending on the bug, you can be rewarded with a bounty anywhere from $100 to $10,000.

The bug bounty program has been in a private release for several months, with invited researchers submitting bugs and to help us test the triage process. And today, the new Kubernetes bug bounty program is live! We’re excited to see what kind of bugs you discover, and are ready to respond to new reports. You can learn more about the program and how to get involved here.

Dedicated to Kubernetes security

Google has been involved in this new Kubernetes bug bounty from the get-go: proposing the program, completing vendor evaluations, defining the initial scope, testing the process, and onboarding HackerOne to implement the bug bounty solution. Though this is a big effort, it’s part of our ongoing commitment to securing Kubernetes. Google continues to be involved in every part of Kubernetes security, including responding to vulnerabilities as part of the Kubernetes Product Security Committee, chairing the sig-auth Kubernetes special interest group, and leading the aforementioned Kubernetes security audit. We realize that security is a critical part of any user’s decision to use an open-source tool, so we dedicate resources to help ensure we’re providing the best possible security for Kubernetes and GKE.

Although the Kubernetes bug bounty program is new, it isn’t a novel strategy for Google. We have enjoyed a close relationship with the security research community for many years and, in 2010, Google established our own Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP). The VRP provides rewards for vulnerabilities reported in GKE and virtually all other Google Cloud services. (If you find a bug in GKE that isn’t specific to Kubernetes core, you should still report it to the Google VRP!) Nor is Kubernetes the only open-source project with a bug bounty program. In fact, we recently expanded our Patch Rewards program to provide financial rewards both upfront and after-the-fact for security improvements to open-source projects.

Help keep the world’s infrastructure safe. Report a bug to the Kubernetes bug bounty, or a GKE bug to the Google VRP.

PHA Family Highlights: Bread (and Friends)




“So..good..”
“very beautiful”
Later, 1 star reviews from real users start appearing with comments like:
“Deception”
“The app is not honest …”

SUMMARY

Sheer volume appears to be the preferred approach for Bread developers. At different times, we have seen three or more active variants using different approaches or targeting different carriers. Within each variant, the malicious code present in each sample may look nearly identical with only one evasion technique changed. Sample 1 may use AES-encrypted strings with reflection, while Sample 2 (submitted on the same day) will use the same code but with plaintext strings.
At peak times of activity, we have seen up to 23 different apps from this family submitted to Play in one day. At other times, Bread appears to abandon hope of making a variant successful and we see a gap of a week or longer before the next variant. This family showcases the amount of resources that malware authors now have to expend. Google Play Protect is constantly updating detection engines and warning users of malicious apps installed on their device.

SELECTED SAMPLES

Package Name SHA-256 Digest
com.rabbit.artcamera 18c277c7953983f45f2fe6ab4c7d872b2794c256604e43500045cb2b2084103f
org.horoscope.astrology.predict 6f1a1dbeb5b28c80ddc51b77a83c7a27b045309c4f1bff48aaff7d79dfd4eb26
com.theforest.rotatemarswallpaper 4e78a26832a0d471922eb61231bc498463337fed8874db5f70b17dd06dcb9f09
com.jspany.temp 0ce78efa764ce1e7fb92c4de351ec1113f3e2ca4b2932feef46d7d62d6ae87f5
com.hua.ru.quan 780936deb27be5dceea20a5489014236796a74cc967a12e36cb56d9b8df9bc86
com.rongnea.udonood 8b2271938c524dd1064e74717b82e48b778e49e26b5ac2dae8856555b5489131
com.mbv.a.wp 01611e16f573da2c9dbc7acdd445d84bae71fecf2927753e341d8a5652b89a68
com.pho.nec.sg b4822eeb71c83e4aab5ddfecfb58459e5c5e10d382a2364da1c42621f58e119b

Announcing updates to our Patch Rewards program in 2020


At Google, we strive to make the internet safer and that includes recognizing and rewarding security improvements that are vital to the health of the entire web. In 2020, we are building on this commitment by launching a new iteration of our Patch Rewards program for third-party open source projects.

Over the last six years, we have rewarded open source projects for security improvements after they have been implemented. While this has led to overall improved security, we want to take this one step further.

Introducing upfront financial help
Starting on January 1, 2020, we’re not only going to reward proactive security improvements after the work is completed, but we will also complement the program with upfront financial support to provide an additional resource for open source developers to prioritize security work. For example, if you are a small open source project and you want to improve security, but don’t have the necessary resources, this new reward can help you acquire additional development capacity.

We will start off with two support levels :
  • Small ($5,000): Meant to motivate and reward a project for fixing a small number of security issues. Examples: improvements to privilege separation or sandboxing, cleanup of integer artimetrics, or more generally fixing vulnerabilities identified in open source software by bug bounty programs such as EU-FOSSA 2 (see ‘Qualifying submissions’ here for more examples).
  • Large ($30,000): Meant to incentivize a larger project to invest heavily in security, e.g. providing support to find additional developers, or implement a significant new security feature (e.g. new compiler mitigations).
Nomination process

Anyone can nominate an open source project for support by filling out http://goo.gle/patchz-nomination. Our Patch Reward Panel will review submissions on a monthly basis and select a number of projects that meet the program criteria. The panel will let submitors know if a project has been chosen and will start working with the project maintainers directly.

Projects in scope

Any open source project can be nominated for support. When selecting projects, the panel will put an emphasis on projects that either are vital to the health of the Internet or are end-user projects with a large user base.

What do we expect in return?

We expect to see security improvements to open source software. Ideally, the project can provide us
with a short blurb or pointers to some of the completed work that was possible because of our support. We don’t want to add bureaucracy, but would like to measure the success of the program.
What about the existing Patch Rewards program?
This is an addition to the existing program, the current Patch Rewards program will continue as it stands today.