Secunia jumps on vuln reward bandwagon
Secunia has launched yet another vulnerability rewards program, the Secunia Vulnerability Coordination Reward Program, which it says is designed to operate independently of particular software vendors.
The company says the idea is to make life easier for researchers, by concentrating vulnerability reporting to a single entity, rather than leaving them to deal with multiple vendors’ reporting procedures and rewards programs.
Vendor programs, the company says, have a “business model wrapped around them,” and therefore can be selective in which bugs win a bounty. The Secunia program will accept any vulnerability in off-the-shelf software.
In its blog post, Secunia’s Carsten Eiram says the “fun part” of research is in discovering a vulnerability or exploit, rather than in the “sometimes extensive coordination and liaison” with vendors.
Under this program, he says, Secunia will “both confirm vulnerability discoveries and handle the coordination process”.
The service could also fill a gap, the company says, for researchers who don’t wish to sell their vulnerabilities, or don’t want to constrain their research to those bugs that happen to fit “the requirements of existing initiatives”.
Rather than cash, Secunia’s rewards will include merchandise and two “major annual rewards” for hotel accommodation and entry to major security conferences.
The program’s criteria are that the vulnerability affects a stable product; it affects the latest version of the product; the product has active vendor support; the vulnerability is not already public; and Secunia can replicate the vulnerability. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/02/secunia_vulnerability_rewards/