Valve Will Pay Thousands to Hackers Reporting Critical Steam Security Flaws
It was announced by Valve, that they started offering bounties on security flaws in their services, with cash awards for hackers who can identify vulnerabilities. The bounties cover Steam, Steam apps, Valve-owned web domains, Valve games, and multiplayer and economy aspects related to those games.
This isn’t an uncommon practice, and Valve join tech companies as significant as Twitter and Nintendo in rewarding white hat hackers for reporting security flaws through their HackerOne board. Bug reports will be rewarded according to CVSS-ranked severity, ranging from $0-$200 on the low end up to $2,000 or more for severe and critical vulnerabilities.
The bounties only cover proper vulnerabilities, with lower key game bugs and exploits still going through Valve’s support site. In the three days since the program’s been up, over $100,000 in bounties have been paid out, with 40 white hat hackers thanked for their assistance. Valve do ask users to refrain from DDOS attacks and social engineering in your attempts to find vulnerabilities, though.
Valve seem to be gearing up for a relaunch on their web presence, with a new website redesign briefly going online earlier today, and the long-reported Steam UI redesign that users are still waiting to be launched.
“About Valve
When you give smart talented people the freedom to create without fear of failure, amazing things happen. We see it every day at Valve. In fact, some of our best insights have come from our biggest mistakes. And we’re ok with that! Since 1996, this approach has produced award-winning games, leading-edge technologies, and a groundbreaking social entertainment platform. We’re always looking for creative risk-takers who can keep that streak alive.
We started with Half-Life®, the first-person, sci-fi shooter game that’s won more than 50 Game of the Year and a few “Best Game Ever” awards. We expanded the Half-Life franchise with a sequel and Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2. Then we added the horror titles Left 4 Dead® and Left 4 Dead 2, the multiplayer combat franchise Team Fortress®, the #1 online action game Counter-Strike® and the award-winning puzzlers Portal™ and Portal 2. And we’re just getting warmed up.”
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