Aussie Hacker Scores $1.5 Million For Bug Hunting

An Aussie bloke has become one of the first in the world to become a verified hacking millionaire.

This news come from a Study by HackerOne a bug bounty solutions organisation. Its white hat hackers are tasked with finding vulnerabilities in company systems before they can be hacked by those with malicious intent.

HackerOne has verified that there are now six hacking millionaires from across the world contributing to its platform.

The first to be identified was an Argentinian teenager back in March. The six men have now earned $US 1 million apiece for identifying bugs and fulfilling bounties.

Over 1,500 companies utilise HackerOne,including Microsoft, google, Intel, Spotify, Twitter and even the U.S. Department of Defense.

Our homegrown hacker is Nathaniel Wakelam, chief information security officer at Gravity. According to itnews Wakelam has been dealing with bugs for the HackerOne platform for six years.

And it’s been making him bank.

“When I first started, the industry was in its infancy. Only a handful of companies invited hackers to find and share vulnerabilities,” Wakelam told itnews.

“Six years later – the space has changed dramatically. Bug bounties have given me the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world, forged connections with people within an industry that I respect, created a secondary income stream within my own life, and allowed me the opportunity to branch out and pursue other business ventures.”

Over the past twelve months HackerOne has paid out over $31 million to hackers across the world. The company has stated that 36 per cent of these earnings have been from hackers in the Russia, India and the United States.

“HackerOne has half a million registered hackers, and 600 new people join every day and they have discovered over 130,000 vulnerabilities so far” said Laurie Mercer, a security engineer at HackerOne to Forbes.

While HackerOne is doing incredibly well when it comes to white hat hacking, the concept has been around for a long time. According to Mercer, the very first bug bounty was for Â£820 and offered to those who identify flaws in the Hubble Telescope thirty years ago.

So if you want to make some coin from your l33t haax, this just might be a decent option.

[itnews, Forbes]