Indian cyber security experts are at the top when it comes to hunting bugs as part of Facebook's bug bounty program. The country tops the list of the rewards paid to the ethical hackers who helped find vulnerabilities in the social network.
Indian programmers have earned almost ₹4.8 crore since the program was started in 2011, out of ₹28.4 crore paid worldwide. Recently a Bengaluru researcher Prakash Anand was paid $15000 (Almost ₹10 lakh) to find a bug regarding Facebook login. The bug could have potentially caused the leak of personal and financial data of the users.
Facebook's technical program manager of Bug Bounty team Adam Rudderman recently posted on Facebook before an event in here "India is consistently the Facebook Bug Bounty program's #1 source of valid vulnerabilities. We're excited to be here to meet the local community face to face, celebrate the successes of Indian researchers with Facebook, and talk about the most effective ways to find high impact bugs and get higher payouts to help us protect 1.5 billion users around the world!"
He added that "The Facebook bug bounty program pays out based on a bug's risk, rather than its complexity or cleverness. This means you can maximize the value of your report by focusing on high-impact areas and submitting good quality reports".
Facebook's bug bounty program was just meant for hunting bugs in the social network initially, but later it was expanded to Facebook's products such as Instagram, Oculus, Internet.org, and Onavo. A recent post by the bug bounty team suggests that over 2400 valid submissions have been made till now and more than 800 researchers have been rewarded. In 2015, 38% more high impact bugs recorded than the previous year. A total of ₹6.23 crore were paid to the bug hunters in the last year.
Although India is topping the list of bug bounty program, Indian cyberspace is under attack constantly. Recently, A Pakistani app was taken down from Google play store for reportedly spying on Indian Army. Pakistani hacker grous also attacked Raipur AIIMS website and railways website.
Contact HuffPost India