Our hackers earned $19 mn in bug bounties in 2018: HackerOne

Hacker-powered security platform HackerOne on Friday said its community earned $19 million (nearly Rs 135 crore) in bounties in 2018 and hackers from India and the US alone accounted for 30 per cent of the total community.

The hacker community has doubled year over year and the bug bounty last year nearly matched the total bounties paid to hackers in the previous six years combined, the platform said in a statement.

"While India, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Britain are the top locations where hackers reside, representing over 51 per cent of all hackers in the HackerOne community, six African countries had first-time hacker participation in 2018," HackerOne added.

For helping organisations become more secure, top earners on HackerOne are making up to 40 times the median annual wage of a software engineer in their home countries, said the "2019 Hacker Report". 

"The perception of hackers is changing," Luke Tucker, Senior Director of Community and Content at HackerOne, said in a statement.

"With the frequency of cyber attacks swelling to new highs, companies and government organisations are realising that in order to protect themselves online, they need an army of highly skilled and creative individuals on their side -- hackers. As more organisations embrace the hacker community, the safer customers and citizens become," Tucker said.

The report highlights the hackers located in more than 150 countries around the world that are responsible for reporting more than 93,000 resolved security vulnerabilities.

Hackers from India and the US alone account for 30 per cent of the total community, which is a shift from 2018 when those two countries claimed 43 per cent, demonstrating increasing globalisation amongst its members.