Bug bounty platform HackerOne has launched a scheme to encourage customers to adopt a standard policy geared towards protecting hackers from potential legal problems.

The Gold Standard Safe Harbor (GSSH) is designed to be “short, broad, [and] easily-understood”, according to HackerOne.

Many bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure programs offer safe harbor agreements that allow hackers acting in good faith to do their thing. HackerOne’s standard policy is designed to collate best practices while reducing the administrative burden for hackers, who will have no need to scrutinize the terms and conditions of targets before looking for in-scope vulnerabilities.

European crowdsourced security platform Intigriti, meanwhile, has launched Bug Bounty Calculator, a tool designed to help bug bounty program owners pitch their payout rates at the appropriate level.

To generate reward suggestions program providers select their industry and describe their assets in terms of risk level, maturity level, and incentive curve.

Inti de Ceukelaire, head of hackers at Intigriti, explained why he built the tool: “Anyone can set up a bug bounty program, but if you aren’t sure what you’re doing, you may pay too much for vulnerabilities. Even worse, set your bounties too low and you may not attract any researchers at all.”

The maximum payout awards under a growing number of programs have reached $1 million and more. Earlier this week The Daily Swig took a closer look into these high potential reward programs and discovered that market forces, in particular a scarcity of skilled talent, are driving up the value of rewards offered.

Web 3.0 and crypto platforms, in particular, are competing to offer dazzlingly high potential rewards. However, experts questioned by The Daily Swig pointed out the rarity of firms in this arena actually paying out seven-figure sums, which suggests some are offering enormous potential bounties in an attempt to court publicity.

Against this are several examples of six-figure payouts by more established tech vendors such as Apple and Intel. However, HackerOne reports that the median payouts for critical vulnerabilities comes in at $3,000 – a figure worth bearing in mind by anyone tempted to quit their day job in pursuit of greater riches on the bug bounty circuit.

An example of an interesting flaw on the lower end of the scale dropped early in November when a researcher revealed that they had earned a $250 bug bounty payout after discovering a code injection flaw in Acronis’ cloud management console that could be abused for data theft.

On November 4, ‘Medi’ (under the alias ‘mr-medi’), published a technical analysis of the client-side path traversal flaw, which they described as the “favorite bug” they’d ever found.

Resource : https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/bug-bounty-radar-the-latest-bug-bounty-programs-for-december-2022