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Facebook Pays Bug Hunters $40,000 in Less Than a Month
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 31 August 2011, 23:07 IST
Bangalore: A month ago Facebook launched a scheme that offered payments to bug hunters who reported flaws in the site's security system. But now the Facebook announced that in the space of just three weeks the bug bounty program has paid out over $40,000 to people who have helped identifying problems.
Sullivan was also keen to clarify the terms of the program, saying, some stories said that the maximum payment would be $500, when in fact that is the minimum amount we will pay. In fact, they have already paid a $5,000 bounty for one really good report, on the other end of the spectrum.
During the last three weeks, Facebook had paid more than $ 40,000 to security experts around the world, one individual has received over $ 7,000 for identifying six different issues, another person gets & 5,000, said Joe Sullivan, chief security officer, Facebook in his blog post. Although the social networking has its own security team, Facebook launched its bug bounty program to tap into the collective wisdom of the site's 750 million users.
Several technology companies have began encouraging hackers to secretly report any security issues and get paid for it, rather than making it public that could be misused by criminals. Companies like Google and Mozilla have similar programs.
The bug bounty program of Facebook is only applicable to the main Facebook website and the company has no plans to extend the program covering Facebook applications. It seems Facebook has come up with a great way to tap into the skills of the security research community to help make the site more secure.