{"slug": "bug-hunters-can-now-earn-up-to-172000-from-openai-as-company-ramps-up-security", "title": "Bug hunters can now earn up to $172,000 from OpenAI as company ramps up security", "summary": "OpenAI quadrupled bug bounty payouts, raising rewards for critical vulnerabilities in products such as ChatGPT and Codex to up to $30,000, with exceptional findings reaching $100,000 and roughly $172,000 including quality, loyalty and campaign bonuses, the company announced. OpenAI also added a five-tier loyalty program and time-limited campaigns tied to new feature launches, and will pay the difference between old and new rates retroactively to anyone who reported a vulnerability in the prior 30 days. Separately, OpenAI is preparing a security sprint in which the security firm Cathedral will work with OpenAI engineers to stress-test its systems; during the last sprint, 25 percent of OpenAI's product engineers worked on finding vulnerabilities.", "body_md": "# Bug hunters can now earn up to $172,000 from OpenAI as company ramps up security\n\n**OpenAI quadruples bug bounty payouts and launches new internal security sprint.** Critical vulnerabilities in core products like ChatGPT or Codex now earn outside researchers up to $30,000, [the company announced](https://openai.com/index/rewarding-defenders-with-bigger-bug-bounties/). Exceptional findings can net up to $100,000, and with quality, loyalty, and campaign bonuses, the total can reach roughly $172,000.\n\nThat puts OpenAI in the same ballpark as Google's general vulnerability rewards program, though still below the top-tier payouts Apple or Microsoft offer for OS-level exploits. New additions include a five-tier loyalty program and time-limited campaigns with boosted payouts tied to new feature launches. Anyone who reported a vulnerability in the last 30 days will get the difference between the old and new rates retroactively.\n\nAlongside the bounty overhaul, OpenAI is [preparing a security sprint](https://openai.com/index/preparing-our-next-security-sprint-to-harden-openai/) where the security firm [Cathedral](https://the-decoder.com/ai-agents-hacked-anthropic-maker-of-arguably-the-most-capable-ai-models-for-cyberdefense/) will team up with OpenAI's own engineers to stress-test its systems. During the last sprint, 25 percent of OpenAI's product engineers worked on finding vulnerabilities, according to the company.\n\n```\nAI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans\n\n\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive \"AI Radar\" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section.\t\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe now\n```\n\n[OpenAI](https://openai.com/index/preparing-our-next-security-sprint-to-harden-openai/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bug-hunters-can-now-earn-up-to-172000-from-openai-as-company-ramps-up-security", "canonical_source": "https://the-decoder.com/bug-hunters-can-now-earn-up-to-172000-from-openai-as-company-ramps-up-security/", "published_at": "2026-11-03 10:42:44+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-03 10:49:40.844659+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "ChatGPT", "Codex", "Cathedral", "Google", "Apple", "Microsoft"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bug-hunters-can-now-earn-up-to-172000-from-openai-as-company-ramps-up-security", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bug-hunters-can-now-earn-up-to-172000-from-openai-as-company-ramps-up-security.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bug-hunters-can-now-earn-up-to-172000-from-openai-as-company-ramps-up-security.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bug-hunters-can-now-earn-up-to-172000-from-openai-as-company-ramps-up-security.jsonld"}}