As I have reported to you for more than a year, various companies and even federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense offer “bug bounties” to vetted hackers who are able to identify vulnerabilities in their software,web pages and computer networks.  Google and Facebook have long made cash payments to independent hackers, sometimes called white hat hackers to distinguish them from the criminal black hat hackers, who identified vulnerabilities in their computer code.  Generally, these bounties are between $500 and $15,000. However, recently Google paid a record bug bounty of $112,500 to Guang Gong, who discovered dangerous Android bugs described as CVE-201-5116 and CVE-2017-14904. Security updates to patch these vulnerabilities were then developed and made available to the public with Google Security Updates for December 2017.
TIPS
Bug bounties represent a positive strategy for businesses and  government to follow to enhance cybersecurity.  As for us, as individuals, the best thing we can do to protect our cybersecurity is to keep our anti-virus and anti-malware software up to date on all of our electronic devices and refrain from clicking on links or downloading attachments in all forms of electronic communication until we have absolutely confirmed that the communications are legitimate.  Otherwise, the risk of downloading malware is too great.