US Airforce is attacked by hackers. It was the continuation of bug bounty program which earlier allowed attacks on Pentagon and the Army. It is an effort to allow security researchers to attack a limited set of Pentagon IT assets. It is now widened to different branches of the armed forces.
The program plans to expand further and allow entities from the U.S and the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“Hack the Air Force has the largest scope of participation yet,” Reina Staley, Chief of Staff at U.S Defense Digital Services.
Earlier the bug bounty program was limited only to US citizens.
“Since the success of Hack the Pentagon and the subsequent Hack the Army bounty, we’ve been working to continually expand the bounds for participation by everyone,” she said. “For this round with the Department of the Air Force, we’re excited to include the citizens of a few allied nations.”
This program is limited scope program where participants need to work on given scope. It’s not open invitation to hack anything. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), known as drones are not included in this program. Hack the Air Force is also limited period program.
“DDS: The Department of Defense launched a Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP) which allows security researchers across the globe to submit discovered vulnerabilities through the HackerOne platform for remediation by DoD security teams,” Staley said. “The VDP provides a safe and legal avenue for anyone to report these vulnerabilities at any time, even outside of a bug bounty program.”
“Our aim is for DoD organizations and all military Services to adopt this crowdsourced security tool,” Staley said. “It’s incredibly important for us to strengthen the assets that support services for our Service members, civilians, and their families around the world.”
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