Xbox Bounty Program Will Pay People Up to $20,000 to Find Bugs

If you've spotted a bug related to Xbox Live recently or end up finding one in the future, you might be able to profit off your discovery in a big way. Microsoft launched its Xbox Bounty Program this week with promises of significant payouts for people who can find weaknesses in different parts of the Xbox Live service whether those are critical issues or those of lesser importance. People who find the most pressing issues can earn as much as $20,000, depending on how well you report the problem and how important Microsoft determines it to be.

The Xbox Bounty Program was announced by Microsoft on Thursday with an overview of how it works and how people can get paid. By working with Microsoft to find these bugs, the company says its bounty hunters can earn anywhere between $500 to the lofty $20,000 bounty that's awarded for the biggest problems.

"The Xbox bounty program invites gamers, security researchers, and technologists around the world to help identify security vulnerabilities in the Xbox network and services, and share them with the Microsoft Xbox team through Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD)," Microsoft said. "Eligible submissions with a clear and concise proof of concept (POC) are eligible for awards up to US$20,000."

Though the bounties are indeed open to anyone, you'll probably have a better chance of finding some of the issues Microsoft is looking for if you've got some technological know-how to help you identify them. Still, anyone can earn the awards, so even an everyday Xbox enthusiast could end up claiming a bounty.

A separate page on Microsoft's site gets into the fine print of the bounty program and lays out exactly what Microsoft is looking for. Issues pertaining to Remote Code Execution will pay out the most while some other categories including Denial of Service are out of the scope of what Microsoft is looking for.

Microsoft outlined the rest of the details on the same site regarding how you can go about submitting your bugs and hopefully claim those bounties, so check there if you're interested in participating in the Xbox Bounty Board.