The self-described hacker got nearly $250,000 at random from Google. I was baffled by the payment.
On Tuesday, Sam Curry tweeted about the mysterious payment from Alphabet Inc. Google,
The Google. “It’s been just over 3 weeks since Google randomly sent me $249,999 and I still haven’t heard anything about the support card. Is there any way we can contact Google?” he wrote.
“It’s okay if you don’t want it again…,” he said sarcastically.
Carey describes himself as a hacker and bounty hunter in his Twitter bio. He works as a staff security engineer at Yuga Labs, the cryptocurrency and non-fungible (NFT) that created the popular token. Bored Monkey Yacht Club NFT project.
NPR Reports Curry occasionally does bug bounty work for Google and other companies.
“Google has already called me and I’m going to the bank today to pay it off,” Carey told MarketWatch on Friday.
“Our team recently made a payment to the wrong party as a result of human error,” a Google spokesperson told MarketWatch. “We appreciate that it was quickly communicated to us by the affected partner, and we are working to rectify that.”
Bug rewards are paid by companies and other organizations when someone discovers a vulnerability in their systems and reports the vulnerability or “bug”, and returns it to them. Last year, for example, the Department of Homeland Security launched its “DHS Hack” program, which invited cybersecurity researchers and ethical hackers to identify potential vulnerabilities in some offshore DHS systems.
In April 2022 section mentioned More than 450 researchers examined identified 122 vulnerabilities, 27 of which were identified as critical. She added that the Department of Homeland Security awarded a total of $125,600 in rewards.
Alphabet shares were down 0.9% before the market opened on Friday. The stock is down 29.0% year-to-date on Thursday, compared to the S&P 500 SPX,
which decreased by 18.2%.
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