Mozilla Pays Bug Bounty

Michael Krax, who lives in Germany, received five bug bounties for a total of $2,500, Thursday. The bugs identified by Krax, said Mozilla, related to chrome privileges. Chrome is developer-speak for the parts of the user interface outside of a window's content area, such as toolbars and menus.

Mozilla's Bug Bounty program began in 2004, and was seeded with money contributed by Linspire (formerly known as Lindows) and venture capitalist Mark Shuttleworth.

This is the fifth bounty paid out by the foundation.

According to some analysts, the bounty program is one reason why Mozilla's browsers -- Firefox in particular -- are more secure than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Mozilla also boasts of how the program is a boon to users. "The open source development model and peer review of all code can really make a dramatic difference in security and general quality," said Chris Hofmann, the director of engineering at Mozilla. "This program is one of the ways we produce safe and secure software."