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Crowdsourcing the Hunt For Software Bugs is a Booming Business -- and a Risky One (technologyreview.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

The cybersecurity gig economy has expanded to hundreds of thousands of hackers, many of whom have had some experience in the IT security industry. Some still have jobs and hunt bugs in their spare time, while others make a living from freelancing. They are playing an essential role in helping to make code more secure at a time when attacks are rapidly increasing and the cost of maintaining dedicated internal security teams is skyrocketing. From a report: The best freelance bug spotters can make significant sums of money. HackerOne, which has over 200,000 registered users, says about 12 percent of the people using its service pocket $20,000 or more a year, and around 3 percent make over $100,000. The hackers using these platforms hail mostly from the US and Europe, but also from poorer countries where the money they can earn leads some to work full time on bug hunting.

3 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. here is some more info on this topic by FudRucker · · Score: 1

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

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    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:here is some more info on this topic by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      It's like M$ a full metal jacket, in-fucking-sane. Let's fuck over our bug testers because when a bad bug leeks out it is so fucking good for our business. Lets fuck over our bug testers hard, bend them over that desk, ram it in and just pound them as hard as possible because that is sure going to make them motivated to find all the bugs and report them instead of selling them on the black market, yeah, uh, uh, uh, uh. No wonder M$ software is so unreliable shite.

      There is a level of perverse insanity only capable by psychopaths, when it comes to handing out source code to outside contractors for bug checking because it is cheaper. Espionage agencies of the world must been having a field day in the contractor market, finding bugs and not reporting them. I'll bet you any kind of money, that you can get more money for those bugs by selling them to the companies competitors. Mass no profit attack that cripples the company, and free's up around 50% of it's customers, just ready for your big marketing push.

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      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. Better by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Better would be to not have so many bugs in the first place. Most of these are preventable with a little knowledge.

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    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."