Hacking, A way To Earn Money?

Hey Guys, This is Fazal Shaik from technical boom,back with a new interesting post about Hacking. Here we will discuss the cults of hackers and then opportunities for a wannabe hacker.

So, What are the different types of Hackers? There are 3 major types of hackers:

White Hat  - The term White Hat Hacker must not be confused with normal Hacking or Hackers who violate legal laws. The term mainly refers to ethical computer hackers or may be a computer security expert who may specialise in testing methods to penetrate the security programs of any software or may be any organisations’s information systems and find out loop holes in them. 

Black Hat – Also known as crackers, these are the men and women you hear about in the news. They find banks or other companies with weak security and steal money or credit card information. The surprising truth about their methods of attack is that they often use common hacking practices they learned early on.

Grey Hat – Nothing is ever just black or white; the same is true in the world of hacking. Grey Hat hackers don’t steal money or information (although, sometimes they deface a website or two), yet they don’t help people for good (but, they could if they wanted to). These hackers comprise most of the hacking world, even though Black Hat hackers garner most (if not all) of the media’s attention.

Why The World Need White Hat Hackers.

One of the best way to improve a company’s security network is to hire hackers. Every hacker has different methods to crack the security. So the companies have come up with a new idea of “Big Bounty Programs” which helps them in improving their System Security. In these programs various experts and hackers try to find out the vulnerabilities in the website or applications that are given as a target to them, and they are rewarded for it if they are successful in doing so.

Many companies offers bounty programs or we can say White Hat Hacking Rewards. These are the best ones that we found:

1.Google

Google promises its White Hack Hackers a reward ranging from $500- $20,000 depending upon the vulnerability level that the hacker discovers. In order to receive the award, the vulnerability must qualify the different conditions stated by the company. The Whit Hat Hacker will also get his or her name entered in the Hall of Fame if he is successful.

2. Facebook

There is no doubt in the fact that Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites all around the globe. But the site has face with many problems in its security in the past few years. Therefore the company has introduced the White Hat Hacking program in which the Hacker receives a minimum of $500 reward from the company. The reward provided by the company depends upon the severity of the bug as well as creativity of the expert.

3. Microsoft

Microsoft has recently expanded its participating pool for the White hat rewards and Bypass bounty for their defense. The people participating in the program may also include other individuals as well as organizations who are capable in turning the normal mitigation bypass methods that they are able to see and can be used as an attacks in the future. The reward offered by Microsoft range from $11,000 to $100,000.

4. Mozilla

The bounty program that has been designed by Mozilla is basically to improve the security research works in the Mozilla software and to award those people who help them in developing the safest internet clients. The reward offered by Mozilla ranges starting from $500 for high severity bugs and sometimes can reach up to $3000 for very critical vulnerabilities.

5. Yahoo

Yahoo has recently become serious to reward its friendly hackers and have announced to reward them with reward money up to $1500. Till now the company only gave T-shirts as a reward, but now the researchers will get at least a reward of $150 from the company and which can go up to $1500.

6. PayPal

PayPal is one of the first companies that offered a bug reporting program to the researchers and hackers. Following the lead of Mozilla, Google and Facebook, the company will now reward the White Hat Hackers for the bugs that they report to the company. There is no set amount for the reward that the hacker will receive but it will depend upon the severeness of the bug reported.

7. Secunia

Secunia has started its bounty program with the name of “SVPA”. The company offers cash rewards to the researchers who develop and report the company about any kind of vulnerability. The Amount of the reward totally depends upon the seriousness of vulnerability reported by the Ethical Hacker.

8. Etsy

The company rewards the White Hat Hackers with a minimum reward of $500 for those vulnerabilities or bugs that qualify their provided conditions and standards which are set by the company’s security team.

9. Barracuda Networks

The bounty reward given by Barracuda networks starts from $100 and goes up to $3,133.7 for very serious bugs. The work of the researcher or White Hat hacker is also credited by the “bug reporter” title if he or she desires.

10. Squidoo

The reward for any kind of bud is decided by Squidoo engineers depending upon the level of seriousness of bug. The reward offered by Squidoo varies from $100 for normal bugs to $1000 for very serious bugs.

Sometimes the researcher or white hacker is not rewarded for his or her reporting of vulnerabilities by the company, that is where crowd funding company enters the scene. The crowd funding companies identify the research work done by the White Hat Hacker and provide them with sufficient rewards that are denied from the company because of one or the other reason.So, What are you waiting for? Go ahead and earn money with those programs.

Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg's Hacking by WSJ_Live

If this post has piqued your interest and wish to know further or have question,do comment below. This is Fazal Shaik and Abhimanyu reddy from technical boom, signing off for the moment, have a great day.