Facebook pays you to hack it

It has been a hacking season. A few companies, large corporations and government agencies had fallen victim with their private data embarrassingly being released to the public. While most companies discourage this sort of activity, Facebook on the other hand encourages it. To show appreciation to security researchers, Facebook has launched a monetary bounty for certain qualifying security bugs. The compensation, which starts at $500 and has no maximum set, will be paid only to researchers who follow Facebook's Responsible Disclosure Policy and agree not to go public with the vulnerability information until Facebook has fixed the problem. "Typically, it's no longer than a day" to fix a bug, Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan told CNET in a conference call. Under the previous system users were given recognition on the Whitehat page and potentially a job, though the chances of this were slim unless they consistently found fault and helped to fix it. "If you're a security researcher, please review our responsible disclosure policy before reporting any vulnerability. If you're not a security researcher, visit the Facebook Security Page for assistance. If you believe you've found security vulnerability on Facebook, we encourage you to let us know right away. We will investigate all legitimate reports and do our best to quickly fix the problem," said Facebook.