Is "Bounty Hunting" The Next High-Paying Freelance Career?

Minimalist · Dec 30, 2017

Many software companies offer bounties to anyone who can find glitches their code that could open the door to hacking.

But often, it’s hard for those who find errors to collect the cash, says Pascal Thellmann, an entrepreneur based in Munich, Germany.

When a techie reports a vulnerability, he told me, “these companies decide not to make the payment. Maybe from their point of view it doesn’t qualify.” For instance, the work of several “bounty hunters” may have contributed to the discovery of the vulnerability in a company’s code, making it hard to determine who should get the prize.

Because people with coding knowledge aren’t sure if they’ll see any rewards, they sometimes opt out of bounty programs—meaning companies miss out on important knowledge that could prevent hacking. And, at the same time, individuals who could potentially make a living finding these vulnerabilities can’t count on doing so, because they never know if they’ll get paid.

At the startup Bounty0x.io, Thellmann and two co-founders aim to change that. Their vision is to create an alternative freelance career path built on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Thellmann has a copywriting background. Co-founder Angelo Adam is an attorney, while co-founder Deniz Dalkilic is a software engineer.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/elaine...hunting-the-next-high-paying-freelance-career

itman · Dec 30, 2017

I wouldn't "stake my livelihood" on it. Case in point is Microsoft. Their favorite retort to a POC security vulnerability disclosure is it is not "but the feature is functioning as designed."

Minimalist · Dec 31, 2017

itman said: ↑

I wouldn't "stake my livelihood" on it. Case in point is Microsoft. Their favorite retort to a POC security vulnerability disclosure is it is not "but the feature is functioning as designed."
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Yes, but with this service it's not Microsoft that says if it's a bug or not, but 3rd party - "bounty sheriff". And they already "gave up their money".

guest · Jul 24, 2018

This 18-year-old’s hacking side hustle has earned him $100,000 — and it’s legal
More companies are offering ‘bug bounties’ for enterprising hackers
July 23, 2018
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/t...as-earned-him-100000-and-its-legal-2018-07-23

Sam Curry, an 18-year-old student in Lincoln, Neb., has been obsessed with computers from a young age, but his hobby wasn’t always a constructive one.

The next time he found a security vulnerability, rather than exploiting it, he reported it to the high school administration. They gave him a $50 gift card to fast-food restaurant Subway as a reward. “That is the first time I realized there is a positive outlet for this work, and maybe I could get paid for it,” he said.

Since then, Curry has made more than $100,000 from legally hacking high-profile institutions including the U.S. Department of Defense, video game company Valve, and Yahoo. He is one of a growing number of hackers cashing in on “bug bounties” — monetary rewards that organizations pay hackers to expose vulnerabilities in their systems.
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