Japan-based communications company LINE Corporation today announced the launch of a public bug bounty program on hacker-powered pentest and bug bounty platform HackerOne.
Launched in 2011, LINE has grown to become one of the largest social platforms in the world, with hundreds of millions of users globally.
Following the launch of a private bug bounty program on HackerOne in July 2019, LINE is now inviting all of the platform’s contributing hackers to find security vulnerabilities in the LINE core messenger application and web domains.
The private program, the company says, has already proven successful, with nearly $30,000 paid in bug bounty rewards over the course of four months and with increased engagement from hackers worldwide.
LINE has been running its own bug bounty program since June 2016. Combined with the recent HackerOne private program, it has resulted in over 1,000 vulnerability reports being submitted and over $300,000 being paid in bounties.
Along with the launch of the new public program, the company revealed that it is transitioning its entire bug bounty ecosystem to the HackerOne platform.
“We are thrilled to be moving to the HackerOne platform as it allows us to increase our visibility and thereby increase the amount of high quality reports we receive as well. As being transparent about security issues is very important to us, we wanted a convenient way to disclose such information,” said Naohisa Ichihara, head of cyber security department at LINE.
HackerOne’s community has grown to more than 570,000 registered hackers, all of whom are welcome to participate in LINE’s public bug bounty program. Valid vulnerability reports could result in monetary gains ranging from $500 to $30,000.
LINE assets within the scope of the program include the LINE application (for iOS, Android, Chrome, MacOS and Windows) and web domains (store.line.me, news.line.me, music.line.me and live.line.me).
It its 2019 Hacker Powered Security Report, HackerOne revealed that six of its registered hackers have already surpassed $1 million in lifetime earnings from bug bounties and that more than 50 hackers have earned over $100,000 in bounty rewards through the platform.
HackerOne opened APAC headquarters in Singapore earlier this year and has brought on notable customers in the area, including Singapore’s Ministry of Defence (MINDEF), GovTech Singapore, Xiaomi, Zomato, Toyota, Nintendo, Grab, and Alibaba.
During a live-hacking event held in Singapore in March, Dropbox paid over $300,000 in bug bounties to participating hackers.
Singapore is also host to the APAC edition of SecurityWeek’s ICS Cyber Security Conference, an event dedicated to serving critical infrastructure and industrial Internet stakeholders in the APAC region.
Related: Singapore Ministry of Defence Launches New Bug Bounty Program
Related: Two White Hats Earn Over $1 Million via Bug Bounty Programs
