We reported awhile back (July, technically) that for bug-finding within its various products from $500 to $3,000quite a hefty chunk of change for anyone self-tasked with hunting down bugs that "could compromise users of those products, as released by Mozilla Corporation or Mozilla Messaging," says the company.

Well, it hasn't taken one enterprising teen too long to pull down his own $3,000 paycheck from Mozilla. A combination of sleuthing and programming skillsover a couple weeks' worth of work, reports the San Jose Mercury Newshas earned 12-year-old Alex Miller of San Jose, CA the summer allowance.

His bug? A critical buffer overflow and memory corruption issue, which took the seventh-grader roughly 90 minutes per day over the span of ten days to investigate. For those keeping score at home, that's 15 hours of work, or an end salary of roughly $200 per hour for Miller's work.

"Mozilla depends on contributors like these for our very, sort of, survival. Mozilla is a community mostly of volunteers. We really encourage people to get involved in the community. You don't have to be a brilliant 12-year-old to do that," said Brandon Sterne, a security program manager at Mozilla, in an interview with the Mercury News.

Miller, who's a big fan of badminton, guitar, and building "deadly robots" for Science Olympiad, already knows exactly what he's going to do with his bountywhich his friends didn't even believe he was receiving until he showed them the actual, physical check from Mozilla. The self-taught teen has already donated one-third of his check, or $1,000, to a neighborhood nonprofit organization, Unconditional Love Animal Rescue.

He'd also like to buy a new computerperhaps to speed up his future bug sleuthing effortsand to get his family some Christmas gifts this year. The rest of his bounty will sit in the bank though, if Miller has his way, it might be joined by some additional funds from Mozilla in the future.

"But you still have to do chores," says Miller, adding a little teenage perspective to his new part-time job.