Bounty hunters are legally hacking Apple and the Pentagon
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The more prominent the brand/company the more people will want to find vulns. Especially when you're not the Pentagon or Apple but some no-name vendor nobody ever heard of. In that case you won't get the same value out of it. They're not a replacement for regular professional security audits. Really crucial for small firms who think they solve all problems with a bug-bounty[0].
The "market" currently dictating the amounts offered in bounties doesn't really reflect level of risk[1] associated with vulns. And IMO never will.
Bug-bounties aren't new, but the professional way and scale in which they're organized is new (crowd-sourcing really works here). So I'm pretty excited to see how this evolves.
[0] https://twitter.com/CopperheadOS/status/753253574184951808
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/technology/apple-will-pay-...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/08/09/why_apple...
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