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Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

digit.fyi

11–20 of 178 posts

Re: Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

#11
post #2

I like the picture at the beginning of some CLI novice trying to git push his home directory

That reminds me of my idea to create "tech" stock imagery that isn't a joke

So the opposite of what the Hacker Dojo did around 2012/2013: https://slate.com/technology/2013/02/hacker-photos-how-hacke...

Re: Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

#13
I'm very happy for the kid and like the idea that these programs are available but does this incentivise companies to effectively outsource their bug finding?

From a purely fiscal point of view, why hire expensive full time staff to go digging when you can just throw a few sheckles at stuff as it comes up?

Re: Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

#15
post #7
post #2

I like the picture at the beginning of some CLI novice trying to git push his home directory

I like the random nucleotide sequence in the background. super relevant.

The terminal could have opacity at 75% and then have some bioinformatics stuff in the background in another application (browser, whatever).

I want to believe.

Re: Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

#16
post #13

I'm very happy for the kid and like the idea that these programs are available but does this incentivise companies to effectively outsource their bug finding? From a purely fiscal point of view, why hire expensive full time staff to go digging when you can just throw a few sheckles at stuff as it comes up?

You still neee security engineers to operate the program.

Re: Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

#17
post #13

I'm very happy for the kid and like the idea that these programs are available but does this incentivise companies to effectively outsource their bug finding? From a purely fiscal point of view, why hire expensive full time staff to go digging when you can just throw a few sheckles at stuff as it comes up?

When your company is as massive as something like google and you have nation states, groups, and individuals literally trying to hack you every few minutes, it’s definitely more financially viable to have a full time security team

Outsourcing bug finding is only a retroactive solution, not a proactive one

Re: Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

#18

I wish I had a knack for this type of work. That's quite a bit of cash. I do feel I am a competent software engineer, but understanding data structures and algorithms doesn't necessarily correlate to one's ability to identify security vulnerabilities.

> understanding data structures and algorithms doesn't necessarily correlate to one's ability to identify security vulnerabilities.

No, but it does suggest that you're likely capable of learning security work. Just like your data structure and algorithm knowledge didn't come for free, nobody is born knowing how to find security problems. You need to work for it.

Re: Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

#19
post #13

I'm very happy for the kid and like the idea that these programs are available but does this incentivise companies to effectively outsource their bug finding? From a purely fiscal point of view, why hire expensive full time staff to go digging when you can just throw a few sheckles at stuff as it comes up?

Because a bug bounty does not guarantee that people actually look into your code. Of course some white hats while invest time upfront, but there is no guarantee and absence of payed bounties is not evidence of absence of bugs.

Also, a bug bounty usually limits the scope a lot more than a typical pentest does, i.e. no testing of infrastructure security, internal networks etc..

Lastly, if your bug bounty is high enough to make highly skilled people spent time to find your bugs its probably cheaper to just higher some security folks yourself and prevent excessive payouts (by preventing bugs).

Of course all of this does not stop some C-levels from using a bug bounty as replacement, but the issue is not as clear cut and especially the last point should even make sense to non-technical people.

Re: Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties

#20
post #13

I'm very happy for the kid and like the idea that these programs are available but does this incentivise companies to effectively outsource their bug finding? From a purely fiscal point of view, why hire expensive full time staff to go digging when you can just throw a few sheckles at stuff as it comes up?

Why not both? The bounties are great for finding things your security team might not think about or might consider low-pri, but having a dedicated team is important to make sure you've got the core use cases covered.
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