"DHS Establishes Its Own Bug Bounty Program, Offering Outsiders $500 to $5K For Discovering Flaws"
The Homeland Security Department is launching a bug bounty program to invite researchers to probe its systems for flaws. Under the “Hack DHS” initiative, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that ethical hackers would receive between $500 and $5,000 for identifying vulnerabilities, depending on their severity. The department would verify flaws within 48 hours and fix them within 15 days, or for complex bugs, develop a plan to do so during that period. DHS is later to the bug bounty trend than some other federal agencies, with the Defense Department initiating its “Hack the Pentagon” pilot back in 2016. The IRS that same year began the first civilian federal agency bug bounty program. According to DHS, the program will run throughout fiscal year 2022, which began in October.