Top Bug Bounty Platforms
In this article, we will be discussing the importance of bug bounty programs and mention top bug bounty platforms.
What is a Bug Bounty Platform?
As mentioned in Wikipedia:
“A bug bounty program is a deal offered by many websites, organizations and software developers by which individuals can receive recognition and compensation for reporting bugs, especially those pertaining to security exploits and vulnerabilities”.
To clarify it more, let’s take an example:
Company x wants to check its softwares and domains for any security vulnerabilities and issues, it has two choices, first one is to self-host their bounty platform, and the second is to launch their bounty program on a bug bounty platform.
Why launching a Bug Bounty Program ?
Some would say that why companies resort to bounty programs instead of hiring security professionals! Well, the answer is simple, some of them have their own security team, but when we are talking about big corporations like Facebook, Google, etc, they launch and develop a lot of softwares, domains, and products continuously. With this amount of targets, it becomes impossible for the security team no matter how big it is, to test all these targets. So bounty programs can be an efficient way for companies to continuously test all of their digital assets. Plus, bug bounty programs encourage security researchers to work ethically for these companies by acknowledgment/bounties. That’s why, it makes more sense to large companies to use bug bounty programs. However, for small budget companies using a bug bounty program might not be their best option as they might receive a lot of vulnerabilities that they can’t afford using their limited resources.
TOP Bug Bounty Platforms
1- Hackerone
Hackerone is one of the leading platforms in bug bounty, they provide several features like connecting companies with hackers and creating your bug bounty program.
They provide two approaches to use the platform, either using the platform to manage the vulnerability reports and deal with it by yourself, or letting the professionals at hackerone to do it for you (triaging). Triaging is the process of analyzing reports, verifying them and communicating with security researchers.
In 2019, Hackerone announced that they had raised a total of $110 million for their latest round of funding.
2- Bugcrowd
Bugcrowd offers an efficient way to complete the secure development lifecycle and leverage the community of security researchers to find those obscure vulnerabilities no one else can find.
In April 2020, Bugcrowd Inc announced that it had raised $30 million in a new funding to accelerate the expansion of its platform. However, BugCrowd has raised $78.7 million to date, including a $15 million round in April 2016 and a $26 million round in March 2018.
3- Synack
Synack is an American tech corporation that provides automated discovery of exploitable vulnerabilities, was founded by some NSA agents.
In May 2019, Synack was announced to be the most trusted crowdsourced security platform, and has been named as a 2019 CNBC Disruptor 50 for the fourth time.
4- Intigriti
Intigriti is one of Europe’s leading crowdsourced cybersecurity firms in ethical hacking and bug bounty. It connects over 15,000 ethical hackers from 130 different countries with organizations to test and improve their security.
It allows its customers to experience the comfort of continuous security assessment.
Also, it has a useful weekly newsletter for bug bounty hunters containing a lot of good articles, write-ups, and POCs to improve the power of bug bounty community members.
They have announced that it has raised €4.1 million in their Series A round, to accelerate strengthen the hacker-powered security platform’s key position in Europe and internationally, led by European based venture capital firm ETF partners.
5- YesWeHack
A bug bounty platform that comes with personalized support and automation tools to facilitate your scale-up and drive agility. YesWeHack provides training to empower your staff by connecting them with world-class experts, also they have a rank system for bug bounty hunters that increases the competition of the security researchers by using their hacking skills ethically.
YesWeHack raised €4 million in February-2019 in early stage venture funding from Open CNP to help accelerate the expansion of its operations in Europe and Asia.
6- HackenProof
HackenProof is one of the youngest bug bounty platforms in this list and a part of Hacken Ecosystem comes with products empowering the cybersecurity industry from all sides: bug bounty platform, crypto exchange analytical ranking platform, cybersecurity conference HackIT, and a cyber school.
Morpheus.network (cryptocurrency and supply chain network) announced partnership with cybersecurity firm Hacken.io to strengthen their security measures one step further.