Bug bounty programs have become really popular in the tech industry. Many tech brands hire ethical hackers to find a bug in their software and even get paid in return.
In recent news, Sony has announced its own bug bounty program for its PS4 and the PlayStation Network. The highest pay goes to the ethical hackers who are able to find critical vulnerabilities in PS4 which is $50,000.
Sony has partnered with HackerOne, a leading security platform, to help run this bug bounty program.
Sony said in a statement this week,
We are inviting the security research community, gamers, and anyone else to test the security of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Network.
Sony has divided the rewards into various groups like critical, high severity, medium severity, and low severity groups. Finding a critical bug in the PS4 will make you eligible for a reward starting at $50,000 (approx Rs 38 lakh) while finding a high, medium, and low severity bug can get you $10,000 (approx Rs 7.5 lakh), $2,500 (approx Rs 2 lakh), and $500 (approx Rs 38,000).
Whereas, finding a critical bug in PSN will pay you $3,000 (approx Rs 2.5 lakh) while finding a high, medium, and low severity bug will get you $1,000 (approx Rs 75,500), $400 (approx Rs 30,000), and $100 (approx Rs 7,500) respectively.
Apparently, Sony will award a bounty to the first hacker who reports a previously unreported vulnerability.
Ethical hackers have earned almost $100 million in bug bounties on the leading security platform HackerOne. A YOY growth of 85.6 % in total bounty payments with an increase of 17.5 % has been reported since Covid-19 was declared a pandemic.
