The number of hackers disclosing security vulnerabilities and reporting them to bug bounties has increased significantly over the past year.
The “2021 Hacker Report” from popular bug bounty platform HackerOnedetails the growth and evolution of penetration testing and ethical hacking over the past 12 months. According to the report, there has been a 63% increase in the number of hackers submitting vulnerabilities during this period.
The goal of bug bounties is to protect and secure various systems, applications , etc., but also to provide a means for ethical hackers to investigate uncover vulnerabilitiesand before cybercriminals exploit them . During 2020, hackers participating in HackerOne's bug bounty programs earned a total of $40 million for revealing bugs.
Typically, most hackers look for vulnerabilities in web applications. However, recently, more and more researchers have started to look into other potential bugs. During this time, there has been a big increase in the submission of vulnerabilities related to devices Android, Internet of Things, and APIs.
According to a HackerOne survey, a large percentage of hackers admit that financial gain is a significant reason for finding and disclosing vulnerabilities, but many also said they do it to learn new things or even for fun.
“We are seeing a huge increase in vulnerability submissions across all categories and an increase in hackers specializing in a wider variety of technologies,” said HackerOne co-founder Jobert Abma. Abma is a big believer in researchers’ ability to discover vulnerabilities.
“Every time a hacker plugs multiple low-severity vulnerabilities to help a customer avoid a breach or finds a way to bypass a software patch, it proves that machines will never truly surpass humanity,” he said.
Source: ZDNet
