Hackers could earn up to $250,000 USD if they find any bugs

Feb 15, 2018 01:15 GMT  ·  By

Intel announced on Wednesday that it would expand its bug bounty program for the Spectre security vulnerabilities until the end of the year, and will award hackers with up to $250,000 USD.

The tech giant launched its bug bounty program last year in March to encourage hackers and security researchers to discover potential flaws in its processors, such as the recently unearthed Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that affect all CPUs made in the last two decades.

While Intel is still struggling to release updated microcode firmware for all of its processors, it announced that it wants to expand its bug bounty program until December 31, 2018, with a new offering that would help them discover better fixes for side channel vulnerabilities like Spectre.

"In support of our recent security-first pledge, we’ve made several updates to our program. We believe these changes will enable us to more broadly engage the security research community, and provide better incentives for coordinated response and disclosure that help protect our customers and their data," says Intel.

Intel will award security researchers with up to $250,000 USD

On top of that, the company promises to award hackers and security researchers for their findings of new vulnerabilities under the new program with up to $250,000 USD. In the same manner, Intel also increased the bounty awards across its entire portfolio with prizes of up to $100,000 USD.

On top of that, they opened their bug bounty program to all security researchers from all over the world, which means that you no longer need an invitation to attend the program. This makes us believe Intel is very serious about fixing any flaws its existing and future processors. To join the bug bounty program, check out Intel's security site and HackerOne page.

Last week, the company released new microcode firmware updates to mitigate the Spectre security vulnerability in its Skylake series of processors, and will continue to do so with other CPUs line-ups until all of them will be patched against these nasty hardware bugs. Meanwhile, users are urged to keep their systems up-to-date at all times.