Microsoft Launches $100k Bug Bounty Program

Trailrunner7 writes "After years of saying that the company didn't need a bug bounty program, Microsoft is starting one. The company today will announce the start of a new program that will pay security researchers up to $100,000 for serious vulnerabilities and as much as $50,000 for new defensive techniques that help protect against those flaws. Microsoft security officials say that the program has been a long time in development, and the factor that made this the right time to launch is the recent rise of vulnerability brokers. Up until quite recently, most of the researchers who found bugs in Microsoft products reported them directly to the company. That's no longer the case. The system that Microsoft is kicking off on June 26 will pay researchers $100,000 for a new exploit technique that is capable of bypassing the latest existing mitigations in the newest version of Windows."

Comments

Breaking News: Microsoft goes bankrupt.

[Anonymous Coward]

After just one hour since they announced they "100k per bug" program, over 4 million bugs unique bugs were reported. When looking for comment, Steve Ballmer was seen parasailing into the sunset on his golden parachute.

Re:Bugs in Windows? Unthinkable!

[Mister Transistor]

This is old news! I have been getting rich forwarding emails from Microsoft's Email Beta Test program for years now.

That check should be showing up any day now...