Google Introduces $250,000 Root-in-Cloud Bug Bounty Reward

Google has expanded its Cloud Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) with a new $250,000 top-tier reward for security weaknesses that could lead to full administrative control.

The premier payout is "specifically designed to recognize high-impact architectural research" and will be handed out to researchers who can demonstrate gaining 'roles/owner' privileges or complete IAM control over arbitrary Google Cloud organizations or projects.

According to the internet giant, to qualify for the reward, the exploit path should not depend on pre-existing access to a project, previously compromised credentials, or user interaction/social engineering.

Reports that demonstrate remote code execution (RCE) in Borg (Google's underlying production infrastructure) or root-in-production will also be evaluated for the new $250,000 root-in-cloud reward.

"Because code execution in Borg has the potential to impact service availability or cross-tenant data, researchers must halt all probing immediately upon achieving any execution in Borg. Escalation, extracting production credentials, and lateral movement are not allowed and will result in researcher disqualification," Google Cloud CISO Chris Betz said.

The company has added the root-in-cloud validation criteria to its Cloud VRP page, explaining that it will award the bug bounty if its analysis of the initial entry point, execution context, and attack surface demonstrates that full arbitrary tenant or project takeover is possible.

"Identifying tenant-isolation bypasses and complex cross-service logic flaws requires human creativity, intuition, and rigorous systems analysis combined with the power of agentic systems," Betz noted.

According to Michael Cote, Google Cloud's vulnerability reward program lead, first-time researchers who combine their own intuition with agentic tools are finding more interesting bugs, on average, than novices did two years ago.

He also pointed out that finding bugs eligible for the new root-in-cloud tier requires deep architectural intuition and AI.

"High incentives require clear, safe rules of engagement. We never want researchers testing exploits against real customer projects. Instead, we created a deterministic proof-of-root mechanism using a designated service account. Researchers can cryptographically prove unauthorized access against that identity," Cote said.

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