Comment by 0xbadcafebee

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.