Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Audits

Expert Hacks Internal DoD Network via Army Website

A security researcher who took part in the Hack the Army bug bounty program managed to gain access to an internal Department of Defense (DoD) network from a public-facing Army recruitment website.

A security researcher who took part in the Hack the Army bug bounty program managed to gain access to an internal Department of Defense (DoD) network from a public-facing Army recruitment website.

Hack the Army ran via the HackerOne platform between November 30 and December 21, and the results of the program have now been made public. A total of 371 people registered, including 25 government employees, and they submitted 416 vulnerability reports – the first one came within five minutes of launch.

Roughly 118 of the reports have been classified as unique and actionable, and participants have been awarded a total of approximately $100,000. The final amount may be larger as bounties are still being paid out.

The most noteworthy submission came from a researcher who managed to chain multiple vulnerabilities in order to get from the goarmy.com Army careers website to an internal DoD network that can normally be accessed only by authorized users.

“They got there through an open proxy, meaning the routing wasn’t shut down the way it should have been, and the researcher, without even knowing it, was able to get to this internal network, because there was a vulnerability with the proxy, and with the actual system,” the Army said in a blog post on HackerOne.

The Army believes an automated testing system could not have known how to chain less serious flaws into a potentially dangerous exploit.

Hack the Army was announced in mid-November after the DoD awarded a combined $7 million contract to HackerOne and Synack for helping the organization’s components launch bug bounty programs similar to Hack the Pentagon.

Hack the Pentagon received 138 valid submissions and it cost the U.S. government $150,000, half of which went to participants. Thanks to the success of these programs, similar events will likely be launched in the future.

In the meantime, researchers who find flaws in the DoD’s *.defense.gov and *.mil websites are still encouraged to report them. The Pentagon recently published its vulnerability disclosure policy in an effort to provide guidance to white hat hackers on how to legally report their findings.

Related Reading: US Army Website Hacked

Related Reading: Synack Announces New Government Solution, IRS Contract

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Management & Strategy

SecurityWeek examines how a layoff-induced influx of experienced professionals into the job seeker market is affecting or might affect, the skills gap and recruitment...

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Vulnerabilities

Apple has released updates for macOS, iOS and Safari and they all include a WebKit patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529.

Application Security

Drupal released updates that resolve four vulnerabilities in Drupal core and three plugins.

Identity & Access

Zero trust is not a replacement for identity and access management (IAM), but is the extension of IAM principles from people to everyone and...

Network Security

NSA publishes guidance to help system administrators identify and mitigate cyber risks associated with transitioning to IPv6.