Hackers earned a record $40m (£28m) in 2020 for reporting software flaws via a leading bug bounty reporting service.
HackerOne said nine hackers made more than $1m each after it flagged their findings to affected organisations.
One Romanian man, who only started bug-hunting two years ago, saw his total earnings to date top $2m. The UK's top-earning hacker made $370,000 last year.
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A survey HackerOne commissioned indicated that 38% of participants had spent more time hacking since the Covid-19 outbreak began.
This may worth something:
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Significant jump in number of hackers reporting vulnerabilities to companies
The number of white hat hackers who find security vulnerabilities and warn companies about them, usually to earn a bug bounty, increased by 63% in 2020, according to the latest annual Hacker report .
The number of ethical hackers reporting bugs or vulnerabilities to enterprises has increased by 143% since 2018, demonstrating that hackers and IT security teams are working together much more frequently to manage cyber threats.
The report, published on 9 March by security platform HackerOne, also found that more than one-third (38%) of hackers have spent more time hacking since the start of the pandemic, with many zeroing in on emerging threats that have arisen from the shift to remote working and organisations' consequent digital transformations.
Hackers act differently if accessing male or female Facebook profiles | New Scientist
Cybercriminals seem to behave differently depending on the age and gender listed on the Facebook accounts they hack into, although questions have been raised about the ethics of the study that has revealed this.
Jeremiah Onaolapo at the University of Vermont and his colleagues, including some at Facebook, created 1008 realistic Facebook accounts, populating them with fake information, photos and posts. They then leaked the login details for 672 of these accounts on websites used by hackers to trade compromised credentials, including Pastebin, Paste.org.ru, and the dark web site Stronghold.
While you're here, how about this:
Huge Rise in Hackers Submitting Vulnerabilities During #COVID19 - Infosecurity Magazine
The number of hackers submitting vulnerabilities went up by 63% in 2020, according to HackerOne’s 2021 Hacker Report .
The bug bounty platform noted that hackers ramped up their workload in response to the digital shift during COVID-19, with 38% of those surveyed stating they have spent more time hacking since the start of the pandemic.
Additionally, hackers increasingly targeted different types of technologies in 2020. This included a 694% growth in hackers saying they spend time hacking APIs, a 663% rise in those hacking Android and a 1000% increase in hackers focusing on IoT compared to 2019.
China's Microsoft hackers took unusually reckless turn, FireEye CEO says | Fortune
Hacker's Brief | County 17
CyberWyoming has received many business-related scam reports over the past two weeks. Keep reporting Wyoming – citizen reports will be back next week.
Hackers Target University of Texas at El Paso
The University of Texas at El Paso is scrambling to restore its IT networks following the discovery of a possible cyberattack last week.
Students and faculty were instructed to communicate via Blackboard. On social media, however, some students shared that they had been unable to successfully log in to the learning management system and access assignments. The university has stressed that no students will be penalized for missing deadlines as a result of IT outages.
Happening on Twitter
To show how cancel culture created a GOP distraction which helped President Biden pass his Covid-19 relief bill,… https://t.co/Y2U2c915fQ CNNnewsroom (from New York, NY) Tue Mar 09 20:08:46 +0000 2021
Covid: White hat bounty hackers become millionaires https://t.co/JZXB1086Hg -- British bug bounty hunter Katie Paxt… https://t.co/0csKu92rjW martenmickos (from San Francisco, CA) Wed Mar 10 17:27:39 +0000 2021
Covid: White hat bounty hackers become millionaires https://t.co/lrhj9fVeHC BBCTech (from London, UK) Wed Mar 10 16:47:30 +0000 2021