Facebook and Google have partnered to launch a new conference for the researchers interested on discovering and reporting vulnerabilities.
Called BountyCon and mainly aimed at helping the two better identify new researchers in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as on incentivizing their existing bug bounty community, the conference is scheduled for March 30-31 in Singapore.
The two-day event is invitation-only and will feature some of the top bug hunters from the programs run by both Facebook and Google, who will “share practical tips for discovering and reporting high-quality vulnerabilities.” A live hacking event on the Internet companies’ respective platforms will also be hosted.
The concept of the event is to help build a better relationship with the security community, while also welcoming broad participation from new researchers.
Researchers interested in attending can participate in a Capture the Flag competition (CTF) that runs on both Facebook and Google through February 20. Hidden flags have been placed throughout both platforms for interested researchers to discover.
The CTF competition is meant to determine the top 20 bug ‘hunters’ to be invited to attend the conference. Flags can be discovered “by means of general bug hunting reconnaissance techniques” and no cooperation between participants is allowed, Facebook says.
Those who discover flags on either platforms can report them to Facebook on this page, to earn points. The complete set of rules for the competition is available on this page. Flags can be submitted until 11:59:59 pm Pacific Time on February 20, 2019.
“As with most CTF challenges, the more flags a researcher finds, the higher the score will be. We will invite people to attend BountyCon from among the highest scoring researchers, and we will cover airfare and accommodations in Singapore. In the event of a tie, the researchers with the lowest cumulated submission time will be selected,” Facebook notes.
The conference is mainly aimed at researchers from the Asia-Pacific region, but anyone interested can participate “for a few reserved spots that we are holding for the top worldwide participants who earn the most points,” Facebook says.
The two-day conference will take place just two weeks before SecurityWeek’s 2019 Singapore ICS Cyber Security Conference, an event that will take place on April 16-18, dedicated to serving critical infrastructure and industrial Internet stakeholders in the APAC region.
Related: EU to Run Bug Bounty Programs for 14 Free Software Projects
Related: Singapore Government Announces Second Bug Bounty Program
More from Ionut Arghire
- Google Temporarily Offering $180,000 for Full Chain Chrome Exploit
- Toyota Discloses New Data Breach Involving Vehicle, Customer Information
- Adobe Inviting Researchers to Private Bug Bounty Program
- Critical Vulnerabilities Found in Faronics Education Software
- Chrome 114 Released With 18 Security Fixes
- Spyware Found in Google Play Apps With Over 420 Million Downloads
- Millions of WordPress Sites Patched Against Critical Jetpack Vulnerability
- PyPI Enforcing 2FA for All Project Maintainers to Boost Security
Latest News
- Google Temporarily Offering $180,000 for Full Chain Chrome Exploit
- Russia Blames US Intelligence for iOS Zero-Click Attacks
- Toyota Discloses New Data Breach Involving Vehicle, Customer Information
- Cisco Acquiring Armorblox for Predictive and Generative AI Technology
- Moxa Patches MXsecurity Vulnerabilities That Could Be Exploited in OT Attacks
- Amazon Settles Ring Customer Spying Complaint
- Organizations Warned of Salesforce ‘Ghost Sites’ Exposing Sensitive Information
- Adobe Inviting Researchers to Private Bug Bounty Program
