"Friends, hackers, researchers! Want to help us protect customers, making some of our most popular products better? And earn money doing so? Step right up," Microsoft's "BlueHat" security-research team said in an online posting.

The bug-bounty programs — there are three of them, but one is temporary — begin next Wednesday (June 26).

For "truly novel exploitation techniques" against the latest version of Windows (8.1 Preview), Microsoft will pay up to $100,000 cash. For defenses against those novel exploitation techniques, the company will pony a bonus of up to $50,000.