This article was published on May 20, 2019

Hackers made $32K in 7 weeks by fixing bugs in cryptocurrency projects

Coinbase, TRON, EOS, and Augur paid rewards


Hackers made $32K in 7 weeks by fixing bugs in cryptocurrency projects

In the past seven weeks, white hat hackers earned at least $32,150 by fixing security flaws in popular cryptocurrency and blockchain platforms like TRON, Brave, EOS and Coinbase.

According to data reviewed by Hard Fork, 15 blockchain-related firms have paid rewards to security researchers between March 28 and May 16, split across 30 publicly-released bug reports.

Omise, the software firm behind cryptocurrency OmiseGo, fielded the most fixes (six). Blockchain-powered prediction market Augur disclosed three reports, as did Brave Software, makers of the Brave browser, which features its own native token.

The

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Projects adjust their HackerOne rewards to the severity the discovered security flaws. Whilst the majority of Omise’s reports were only worth around $100 each, other payments in the past seven weeks were much higher.

Block.one, the firm behind the EOS “blockchain,” rewarded one hacker with $10,000 for a single fix, as did budding network Aeternity.

TRON also paid $3,100 to the researcher who realized the network was susceptible to being flooded with malicious smart contracts, which would have brought its blockchain to a screeching halt.

The amount of hackers who prefer to fix security issues seems to be remaining steady — but sometimes they can make off with much bigger amounts exploiting vulnerabilities themselves.

Indeed, cryptocurrency exchange Binance revealed attackers had successfully stolen 7,000 BTC (then $40 million, now $55 million) from its own wallets last week.

Coincidentally, Binance runs its own bug bounty program with a maximum reward of $100,000 for the most critical of vulnerabilities. The Binance hacker remains at large.

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