Coinbase, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, announced it will actively participate in Hackerone’s “Hack the World” project, offering 50,000 USD for a first-place remote code execution. It’s the company’s effort to extend its bug bounty program in hopes of remaining “top-of-[the]-market” with regard to security.
Bug bounties are an increasingly used initiative by businesses to find code issues and security problems through incentivized hacking. Bounty payouts reward hackers to expose companies to problems before potential bad-actors might.
Head of Security for Coinbase, Philip Martin, blogged, “We’re thankful to all the security researchers who have worked hard to find and report vulnerabilities.”
Instead of researchers “facing a choice between using a vulnerability themselves,” he urged, “selling a vulnerability to 3rd parties or giving a vulnerability away for free, bounties present a good, legal, risk-adjusted return for the time invested by a researcher.”
To date, Coinbase has disclosed 73 discovered vulnerabilities.
Mr. Martin emphasized bounties “de-criminalize the actions of good-faith security researchers, while still forbidding malicious hacking