Air Force Pays Out Government's Biggest Bug Bounty Yet

Nextgov: On Dec. 9, a group of elite hackers once again found themselves deep within critical Air Force networks, probing for security gaps that could put the branch’s online operations at risk. And this time, military cyber specialists joined them in the hunt.

The H1-212 hackathon partnered military cyber specialists with an A-list group of 25 ethical hackers from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium and Latvia to scour roughly 300 branch websites for vulnerabilities. The cybersecurity platform HackerOne hosted the nine-hour event in New York City and hand-picked participants from their Top 50 global ranking.

Participants discovered two bugs within the first 30 seconds of the competition, and after 9 hours, they uncovered 55 vulnerabilities worth a total of $26,883 in bounties. This included one critical bug that earned a pair of hackers $10,650, the largest single award in any government bug bounty program so far.

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