Hackers Earned $800k From Crypto Bug Bounties
It holds true that black hat hackers tend to use their skills and knowledge for evil purposes. It could be anything from breaking into investors’ computers all the way to bypassing crypto exchange security protocols, all for the goal of stealing cash. But as far as white hat hackers are concerned, they are the complete opposite – they are more into using theirs for positive contributions in the crypto ecosystem. And based on the latest cryptocurrency news, they have reported earned $878,000 from digital asset bug bounties for the last 12 months.
Primary Targets
Cryptocurrency and blockchain companies, especially exchanges have been the main target of black hat hackers to perform their nefarious acts. In the first two months of 2018, Coincheck and BitGrail lost more than $500 million and $195 million worth of cryptos respectively to these hackers.
In June, both of these companies were hack victims suffering losses of $40 million and $30 million in crypto, respectively. The list goes on and on. In fact, a minimum of 3000 vulnerabilities have been reported in this year alone.
Introduce The Bug Bounty Programs
With bug bounty programs, however, companies invite hackers and ask them to try to break and bypass their security systems. During the competition, the participants are expected to report any vulnerability so that the company can fix it before black hat hackers use it against them.
HackerOne, a bug bounty platform that connects companies with hackers, claimed that its hackers were able to generate $534,500 (60% of this year’s bounties so far) from Block.one, the startup behind EOS.
Coinbase, one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the US, has reportedly given out $290,381 for bug bounties this year, making it the second-largest spender in bug competition this year. It follows Tron closely, which reportedly spent $76,200 this year for the same purpose.
Mainly For Blockchain Vulnerabilities
According to a HackerOne representative, about 4% of all the bug prizes awarded to hackers on the platform so far in 2018 were from cryptocurrency and blockchain companies. The representative also went further to state that these rewards from the crypto industry were more profitable for hackers when compared to other industries.
EOS decentralized apps (DApps) have reportedly lost up to $1 million to hacks since July. Also, hardware wallet Ledger recently expressed regret over the fact that the security researchers disclosed vulnerabilities in its hardware wallets publicly instead of following the standard security principles that are written in Ledger’s Bounty program.