Security: Facebook Pays $40,000 to Hackers in Bug Bounty Scheme
By Rob Scott
August 31, 2011
August 31, 2011
- Facebook has already paid out $40,000 to hackers for identifying flaws in its website, just three weeks after the social networker launched its “Bug Bounty” program that offers compensation for finding vulnerabilities in the site’s code.
- “Schemes such as Facebook’s illustrate the push towards greater disclosure of security weaknesses and hacking incidents, as the technology industry strives to pool its resources to protect itself better,” reports The Financial Times. “The approach has won praise from digital advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”
- “The program has also been great because it has made our site more secure — by surfacing issues large and small, introducing us to novel attack vectors, and helping us improve lots of corners in our code,” explained Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer.
- Facebook joins others such as Google, Mozilla and HP that have programs in place to offer payments to outsiders who identify vulnerabilities.
2 Comments
I like the bug bounty idea…ballsy, especially given that Facebook itself has a bounty on its head (from the hacker group Anonymous)…
I like the bug bounty idea…ballsy, especially given that Facebook itself has a bounty on its head (from the hacker group Anonymous)…
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.