Sony rolled out a new bug bounty program yesterday that will pay up to $50,000 to any hackers who help expose a major vulnerability in the PS4.
Announced over on the PlayStation Blog yesterday, the program is being run in partnership with HackerOne, which works with amateur hackers and security researchers to help make companies aware of security flaws in their products. It’s basically a trophy system for finding ways to break the PlayStation Network and PS4, except there’s real money involved.
The bounty program pays anywhere from $100 to $3,000 for reporting issues with PlayStation Network, and $500 to $50,000 for problems with the PS4. The bigger the flaw discovered, the higher the bounty. It’s similar to the program Microsoft rolled out earlier this year for Xbox, as well as the one Nintendo has in place. According to Sony, it’s been running a secret bounty program for some time now, but decided to roll it out to the rest of the public because it recognizes “the valuable role that the research community plays in enhancing security.”
The PlayStation Network famously went down for 23 days straight after it was hacked back in 2011.