The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) this week announced the launch of a public bug bounty program for Kubernetes, with rewards of up to $10,000 per vulnerability.
Kubernetes is an open-source system designed for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. It was originally developed by Google and it’s now maintained by the CNCF.
The new bug bounty program is hosted by HackerOne and CNCF says it will do its best to respond to submitted reports within one business day, triage vulnerabilities within 10 days, and pay out a bounty within 10 days from triage.
Bounties range between $100 and $10,000, with the highest rewards being offered for vulnerabilities affecting the Kubernetes core, flaws that can be exploited to alter source code, and DoS attacks on release artifacts.
The highest amount CNCF is willing to pay for vulnerabilities affecting non-core components is $5,000. For weaknesses affecting Kubernetes infrastructure or alpha features in the core, the organization will pay up to $2,500.
There is a long list of components that can be targeted and types of vulnerabilities CNCF is looking for. Some types of issues are in scope of the program, but they are currently not eligible for a bounty.
According to CNCF, the bug bounty program is managed by the Kubernetes Product Security Committee, whose members include representatives of Google, Red Hat and Shopify.
The launch of the bug bounty project comes just months after the completion of a security audit that led to the discovery of some critical vulnerabilities.
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Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing 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.
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