← Back to context

Comment by 0xbadcafebee

5 days ago

Why is it the USA doesn't have their own bug bounty program for non-DOD systems? Like, sure, they have a bounty for vulns in govt systems. But why not accept vulns for any system, and offer to pay more than anyone else? It would give them a competitive advantage (offensive & defensive) over every other nation. End one experimental weapons program (or whatever garbage DOD spends its obscene budget on) and suddenly we're not cyber-sucky anymore.

6 comments

0xbadcafebee

Reply
eks391  5 days ago

I think you are confusing bug bounty programs with espionage and cyber warfare. The USA definitely accepts vulnerabilities for any system (or at least target systems), paying good money for them if it is an attack chain, giving them that competitive edge you mention. They have at least one military organization over this exact thing (USCYBERCOM) and realistically other orgs to include the intelligence community. There are no bug bounties on "any" system because bug bounties are part of programs to fix bugs, not exploit them. They therefore have bug bounties for their own systems, as those are the ones they would be interested in improving. What you described, which they definitely do, is cyber espionage, and those bugs are submitted through different channels than a bug bounty.

  • 0xbadcafebee  5 days ago

    But that's the thing, I think they specifically need a non-IC program. If I'm a white-hat, grey-hat, or a somewhat cagey black-hat, I'm not gonna reach out to a shadowy organization with a penchant for extrajudicial surveillance, torture & killing to make $50k on a bug. Sure, you can try your hand at selling them an exploit that won't get revealed. But if only you and The Company know about the bug, and it could mean the upside in a potential war (or just a feather in an agency head's cap), why would The Company keep you alive and able to talk about it? OTOH, if the program you're reporting to doesn't have a track record of illegal activity, personally I'd feel a lot safer reporting there. And ideally their mission would be to patch the bug and not hold onto it. But we get to patch first, so it's still our advantage.

lesostep  5 days ago

Because collecting and gatekeeping vulns so you can attack other countries is bad manners. If you look up some of the Snowden testimonies, it's implied USA at least had access to some 0-days at the past, but nobody admitted to it, because it just bad national politics.

Even if USA is doing dog-shit in politics now, openly admitting to collecting cyber-weapons (instead of doing it silently) is just an open invitation to condemnation

qingcharles  5 days ago

From being in the trenches a couple of decades ago, they do. They just don't disclose after they pay the bounty. They keep them to themselves. I knew one guy (~2010?) making good money just selling exploits (to a 3-letter agency) that disabled the tally lamps on webcams so the cams could be enabled without alerting the subject.