As part of their effort to speed up release cycles, Google no longer likes to acknowledge in a big way when they update Chrome. They’re simply doing it too often for it to mean much. But today they’ve taken a bit of time to acknowledge an update to both Chrome and Chrome OS, in part because they were able to quash a big bug.

Specifically, Chrome and Chrome OS were updated to versions 8.0.552.237 and 8.0.552.334, respectively. That itself isn’t huge news as both were already on version 8 — but again, the versions simply don’t mean much anymore. Instead, the bigger news is that Google gave out the first “Elite” Chromium security reward.

Sergey Glazunov gets the first $3,133.70 prize (get it? 31337 — think 1337 with another “e”). Back in July, Google noted that they were creating this new award level (previously, the $1,337 reward was the best you could get). As they noted at the time:

The maximum reward for a single bug has been increased to $3,133.7. We will most likely use this amout for SecSeverity-Critical bugs in Chromium. The increased reward reflects the fact that the sandbox makes it harder to find bugs of this severity.

Today, Google writes, “Critical bugs are harder to come by in Chrome, but Sergey has done it. Sergey also collects a $1337 reward and several other rewards at the same time, so congratulations Sergey!” That’s pretty hardcore.

Several other less-critical bugs were squashed as well. Google gives out these cash rewards both internally and to outside community members, like Glazunov, who find things. Sounds like it could be a pretty good potential recruiting tool as well. Clearly, Glazunov did what Google couldn’t. Give this “elite” man a job!