Mozilla Awards Bug Bounties

March 28, 2005, (Mountain View, CA). The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting choice and innovation on the Internet, today demonstrated its commitment to preserving a safe and secure Internet experience by awarding "bug bounties," a cash prize for users who identify previously unknown security bugs in the open source software. Michael Krax, from Germany, received five bug bounties for a total of $2,500. The bugs identified by Krax related to chrome privileges.

"We developed the bug bounty program to encourage and award community members who identify unknown bugs in the software," said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation. "This program is one of the many ways the Mozilla Foundation produces safe and secure software for its users."

The Bug Bounty program was founded in 2004 with funding from Linspire and Mark Shuttleworth. Since its inception the Mozilla Foundation has awarded bug bounties to five participants.

Firefox has been widely praised for its stability, trustworthiness and innovative features including tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, built-in pop-up blocking, and hundreds of available extensions. SC Magazine, a leading security magazine, recently awarded the Mozilla Foundation with its Editor in Chief award. The browser has been downloaded more that 30 million times and is available in 28 languages.

ABOUT THE MOZILLA FOUNDATION

Established in July 2003, the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization hosting a collection of leading innovators whose mission is to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet. The Foundation provides organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open source software project. The Foundation is based in Mountain View, California. Learn more about the Mozilla Foundation at www.mozilla.org.

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