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Hackers scored a record $40M in bug bounties in 2019

In brief:

Hacking in many people’s minds can have a negative connotation. Nevertheless, there is a growing number of hackers who use their skills to escape SNAFUs, which eventually cost them trillions of dollars. The mission of HackerOne is to connect hackers and companies that donate $40 million a year for bug rewards.

Hackers who leak secrets like the one who revealed the Switch before the launch risked their freedom, but other people can make a small fortune by concentrating their skills on the ethical side of things.

HackerOne

But the so-called white hat community has snowballs in recent years, according to an annual report from the bug bounty platform HackerOne. The organization said that it had more than 600,000 base or registered hackers in 2019, twice that of 2018.

In 2019, companies like Google, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Toyota, Dropbox, and General Motors paid a record $40 million in benefits to the ethical hacker. To put things into perspective HackerOne reports that This is nearly equal to the combined total for all previous years.

Cybercrime is expected to cause some US$ 6 trillion in damage by 2021, according to a analysis by Cybersecurity Ventures. HackerOne says a lot of businesses, including 93% of Forbes 2000 organizations don’t even have a vulnerability disclosure policy that makes contact with the security community simpler.

There were 146 hackers in 2018 who got $1,000,000 a year in money and make this seem like a profitable career. in 2018, one hacker got a $1 million bounty for his work. Governments are also major customers. Of example, HackerOne is collaborating with the US Department of Defense and its Free and Open-Source auditing project is the same. This is so for the European Commission.

This has contributed to the compensation of over $82 million for a total of more than 150,000 vulnerabilities. It also encouraged companies to increase reimbursement amounts.