Management & Strategy

Intel Offers Up to $30,000 for Hardware Vulnerabilities

Intel has launched its first bug bounty program and the tech giant is prepared to offer up to $30,000 for vulnerabilities found in its products.

Eduard Kovacs

March 16, 2017

Intel has launched its first bug bounty program and the tech giant is prepared to offer up to $30,000 for vulnerabilities found in its products.

The bug bounty program, hosted on the HackerOne platform, covers Intel’s software, firmware and hardware. It does not cover Intel Security (McAfee) products, the company’s web infrastructure, or acquisitions completed less than six months ago. Third-party and open source applications are also not in scope of the program.

Researchers who find critical hardware vulnerabilities can earn a maximum of $30,000. Critical flaws in Intel software and firmware are worth up to $7,500 and $10,000, respectively.

The severity of a vulnerability is determined based on its CVSS 3.0 base score, and adjusted depending on the affected product’s threat model and security objectives.

Intel bug bounty program payouts

“We want to encourage researchers to identify issues and bring them to us directly so that we can take prompt steps to evaluate and correct them, and we want to recognize researchers for the work that they put in when researching a vulnerability,” Intel said.

Following the recent Vault 7 leak by WikiLeaks, which describes the CIA’s alleged hacking capabilities, Intel announced the availability of a CHIPSEC framework module that can be used to verify the integrity of EFI firmware executables.

Microsoft launches new Office bug bounty program

Microsoft also made a bug bounty announcement on Wednesday. The company has launched a new program for Office Insider Builds on Windows.

This new bug bounty program, which runs between March 15 and June 15, promises payouts ranging from $6,000 to $15,000 for various types of vulnerabilities. Researchers can earn rewards if they find privilege escalation vulnerabilities via Office Protected View, flaws that allow macro execution by bypassing security policies, and code execution through a bypass of automatic attachment blocking policies in Outlook.

The announcement comes shortly after Microsoft decided to temporarily double bug bounty payouts for vulnerabilities found in core applications of the Office 365 suite.

Written By Eduard Kovacs

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.

Latest News

Click to comment

Mapping Threat Intelligence to the NIST Compliance Framework Part 2

How threat intelligence is critical when justifying budget for GRC personnel, and for threat intelligence, incident response, security operations and CISO buyers.

Landon Winkelvoss

Password Dependency: How to Break the Cycle

Hackers rarely hack in anymore. They log in using stolen, weak, default, or otherwise compromised credentials. That’s why it’s so critical to break the password dependency cycle. But how can this be done?

Torsten George

Why CISOs Make Great Board Members

Cybersecurity-related risk is a top concern, so boards need to know they have the proper oversight in place. Even as first-timers, successful CISOs make for successful board members.

Galina Antova

A Change in Mindset: From a Threat-based to Risk-based Approach to Security

A threat-based approach to security often focuses on a checklist to meet industry requirements but overlooked the key component of security: reducing risk.

Marie Hattar

Secrets to a Good Security Webinar or Conference Presentation

Tips for making a presentation that will help improve the state of security programs and reflect favorably on the presenters and their companies

Joshua Goldfarb

Application Security

Source Code Security Firm Cycode Launches With $4.6 Million in Funding

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

Eduard KovacsSeptember 24, 2019