VeriSign Offers Hackers $8,000 Bounty on Vista, IE 7 Flaws

[ThePitt]

VeriSign's iDefense Labs has placed an $8,000 bounty on remote code execution holes in Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7.

The Reston, Va., security intelligence outfit threw out the monetary reward to hackers as part of a challenge program aimed at luring researchers to its controversial pay-for-flaw VCP (Vulnerability Contributor Program).

The launch of the latest hacking challenge comes less than a month after researchers at Trend Micro discovered Vista flaws being hawked on underground sites at $50,000 a pop and illustrates the growth of the market for information on software vulnerabilities.

iDefense isn't the only brand-name player in the market. 3Com's TippingPoint runs a similar program, called Zero Day Initiative, that pays researchers who agree to give up exclusive rights to advance notification of unpublished vulnerabilities or exploit code.

The companies act as intermediaries in the disclosure process?handling the process of coordinating with the affected vendor?and use the vulnerability information to beef up protection mechanisms in their own security software, which is sold to third parties.

"Both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Windows dominate their respective markets, and it is not surprising that the decision to update to the current release of Internet Explorer 7.0 and/or Windows Vista is fraught with uncertainty. Primary in the minds of IT security professionals is the question of vulnerabilities that may be present in these two groundbreaking products," iDefense said in a note announcing the bounty.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2082014,00.asp

[maash]

if only other OS's price for hacking was this high, Microsoft would quickly become the most safe OS

[paxa]

:blink: what'????

not wanting to be mean or anything like that, but this one has made my week....

maash my thoughts exactly

[revvo]

if only other OS's price for hacking was this high, Microsoft would quickly become the most safe OS

In your dreams sunshine

[.Ark]

This is so retarded lol.. crack the OS and get money.. wow gheyy

[+vlsi0n Subscriber¹]

I thought it was a great idea.. discover the flaws and get paid. Their benefit is now that can patch them.

[.Ark]

I thought it was a great idea.. discover the flaws and get paid. Their benefit is now that can patch them.

Can they just pay their developers and tell them to find the holes instead of this? :/

[HoochieMamma]

Can they just pay their developers and tell them to find the holes instead of this? :/

Nothing would motivate someone more to hunt of bugs then $8000 ;)

[S7un7]

Can they just pay their developers and tell them to find the holes instead of this?

Because the best hackers are probably better programmers than MS's developers.

[L3thal Veteran]

Because the best hackers are probably better programmers than MS's developers.

Or the fact that with millions of lines of code, its nearly impossible to find every single one?