Historic White Hat Hacking Bounties and the Benefits of White Hat Hacking
Believe it or not, hackers played a significant role in shaping the world of cybersecurity long before the world’s first bug bounty program was rolled out by Netscape back in 1995. White hat hacking aims to identify bugs, secure digital infrastructure, and help public and private organizations be more secure in quickly changing digital environments. The word “hacking” initially did not have anything to do with computers. Instead, it described how some savvy members of MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club were starting to make mods to their trainsets and quickly took off with the arrival of the UNIX operating system in the 1960s. In the 60 years since, white, grey, and black hat hackers have had a starring role in creating the modern cyber environment. On the one hand, malicious actors and organizations have kept up the pressure ensuring there has been a need for solutions like anti-virus software and penetration testing. On the other hand, white hat and ethical hackers have been employed across the public and private sector and tasked with protecting the streams of data that run the modern world as we know it. This article covers everything you need to know about bug bounty programs in 2021 and why white hat hackers are highly beneficial for helping to fortify your organization’s digital environment.
HackerOne Helps Creates the World’s First Bug Bounty Millionaires
Mårten Mickos founded HackerOne in 2012 as a vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform connecting aspiring white hat hackers with organizations desperately in need of enhanced digital security. In 2020 alone, HackerOne paid out $40 million to hackers for bug bounties. This sum is staggering and brought the firm’s total amount to over $100 million since they were founded. Currently, in just the first four months of 2021, HackerOne made news around the world when it released the information that it paid out more than $1 million to nine different hackers living around the world. The 2021 HackerOne Report has a wealth of information about the modern landscape of hacking and contained the following key findings in this year’s edition: ● There were 63% more hackers reporting bugs in 2020 when compared to previous years ● There was a 53% rise in bug bounty submissions for improper access control and privilege escalation ● There was a 310% increase in reports related to misconfiguration issues ● 50% of hackers do not report bugs due to a lack of clear reporting structures and previous negative experiences ● While 85% of hackers hack to learn, 76% hack to earn money, and 62% hack to advance their careers Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, hacking has been on the rise due to several interesting reasons uncovered in the 2021 HackerOne Report. First, infosec professionals have seen their workforces drastically reduced over the last 12 months, with many IT departments now 25% less full than they were before the start of the pandemic. That means many private and public sector organizations have been more vulnerable to attack, which has not been lost on hackers. Since the start of the pandemic: ● 38% of hackers have spent more time conducting white, grey, and black hat activities ● 34% of hackers have earned significantly more money pursuing bug bounties ● 34% of hackers feel they have noticed more bugs ● 50% of hackers say they feel more accepted by society Many professionals, such as Shubham Shah, a hacker known as @notnaffy on HackerOne, feel the pandemic will only create more opportunities for hackers. He is quoted in the report as saying: “As businesses recover from this pandemic and economies are rebuilt, I predict that there will be an uptick in application development and deployment. That means the rapid introduction of new assets, applications, and networks; and, therefore, fresh attack surfaces. With the shift to the cloud, companies are adopting newer technologies like Kubernetes to orchestrate the deployment of critical applications and services. New technologies and methodologies mean there are usually misconfigurations along the way that lead to vulnerabilities. Fortunately, there has definitely been a shift in perspective when it comes to working with security researchers. Hackers are seeing large corporations embrace security vulnerabilities from researchers as a core part of their security processes.”