Those pesky browser bugs should be feeling the heat of Google’s latest attempt to catch them in their Chrome browser. Now, researchers who find the bugs can collect a reward.

Last week, Google announced a bug-bounty program that will pay researchers for each vulnerability they report in the browser and its underlying open-source code.

Base bounty: $500 per bug. But a particularly nasty or insidious rascal could net the finder a fee of $1,337.

If that second amount sounds a bit odd — in fact, it is odd — it’s because its a reference to “leet,” a kind of geek-speak used by some researchers. (”Leet” is based on the word “elite” and is meant to imply super powers of accomplishment or prowess.) In this tech language, which has its own alphabet that’s based on various combinations of ASCII characters, “leet” is “spelled” as “1337.”

Of course, this isn’t an original idea. The folks at Mozilla offer a similar reward for browser bugs. (Check out their offer here.)

According to a post at the Chromium blog (where you can get more details on the bounty program), “We will be rewarding select interesting and original vulnerabilities reported to us by the security research community. For existing contributors to Chromium security — who would likely continue to contribute regardless — this may be seen as a token of our appreciation. In addition, we are hoping that the introduction of this program will encourage new individuals to participate in Chromium security. The more people involved in scrutinizing Chromium’s code and behavior, the more secure our millions of users will be.”

Okay, you unmotivated security researchers, get cracking.

Tags: bounty, bugs, Chrome, Chromium, Google, Mozilla