Google pauses open source bug bounty programme

On 5 October 2026, TechCrunch reported that Google has paused its open source software bug bounty programme, effective from 1 October, after a sharp rise in automated submissions, the vast majority of them invalid, and promised an update in the first quarter of 2027. The company said the pause stems from a marked increase in AI submissions, with Google engineers and open source maintainers overwhelmed by large numbers of invalid or hallucinated reports. During the pause, participants were advised to turn to Google's other bug bounty programmes.

Written by AI from the reports · updated 11 d ago