Bug bounty programs have for many years represented an excellent means for software and hardware developers to attempt to discover any potential security flaws within their products. For those of you unaware of what these are, they effectively open up doors to hackers around the world to attempt to find any potential issues or backdoors they hadn’t considered or identified themselves. The key benefit is that offering a significant reward gives the community a huge incentive to dig significantly deeper than any paid company might. All while, at the same time, clearly being useful in that if no faults are discovered, they don’t have to pay anyone anything!
Why are we telling you this though? Well, for those White Hat Hackers among you, Facebook (well, technically Meta) has just announced a new bug bounty program for its Oculus Quest VR headsets with payments of up to $30,000 being offered!
Facebook Launches Oculus Quest Bug Bounty Program!
Although predominantly concentrating on its Oculus Quest VR headset, the new bug bounty program has effectively opened the doors to pretty much all of Facebook’s hardware-focused products. While $30,000 is being offered as the top prize for any flaws discovered, however, as per most programs of this type, payments will be adjudged based on how critical the security flaw was (both potential and real).
Given that they paid out around $2M last year, however, there is clearly a lot of money on the table here for those with the talents to potentially find bugs, glitches, or anything else that could see their products compromised!
Where Can I Learn More?
As often is the case with these bounties, you do have to submit evidence to prove that your security flaw is a legitimate concern. In other words, just having a compelling theory isn’t, generally speaking, good enough unless you are able to provide something to back it up. However, if you do want to learn more and maybe get your hacking skills to work, you can check out the official blog post via the link here!
