"Pentagon Received Over 50,000 Vulnerability Reports Since 2016"

The US Department of Defense (DoD) recently announced that it has processed 50,000 reports received as part of its continuous vulnerability disclosure program (VDP) launched in November 2016.  The program was initiated following a successful "Hack the Pentagon" bug bounty program running on HackerOne, which was followed by similar programs covering Air Force, Marine Corps, Army, and Defense Travel System assets.  Since then, the DoD ran over 40 bug bounty programs in collaboration with HackerOne, Bugcrowd, and Synack, and launched a continuous "Hack the Pentagon" bug bounty program, allowing white hat hackers to submit vulnerability reports all-year-round.  In 2021, the DoD launched a 12-month bug bounty program aimed at finding flaws in contractor networks, and according to the Pentagon's Cyber Crime Center (DC3), saved an estimated $61 million in taxpayer money by addressing over 1,000 vulnerabilities.  Last year, the DoD launched a Hack the Pentagon website to help DoD organizations establish their own bug bounty programs.  By the end of 2022, close to 45,000 vulnerability reports were received from roughly 4,000 researchers participating in the DoD's VDP.  More than 25,000 of the reports were actionable, and over 6,000 of them were successfully mitigated.  HackerOne's founder said that the success of the DC3 VDP is a powerful example of how a strong relationship with the global ethical hacker community translates to the consistent strengthening of cyber defenses. 

SecurityWeek reports: "Pentagon Received Over 50,000 Vulnerability Reports Since 2016"