November 22, 2023 at 06:02AM
Microsoft’s bug bounty program, which pays out rewards to security researchers who discover vulnerabilities, has awarded a total of $63 million over the past decade. The program has experienced explosive growth since 2018, with Microsoft doubling the number of bounty reports, program participants, and awards. Despite this, bug bounty platforms and cash payouts have not necessarily made software more secure, as the focus should be on fixing vulnerabilities and improving secure development practices. Meaningful metrics and feedback loops are needed to assess the success of bug bounty programs and connect them to secure development lifecycles.
The meeting notes discuss Microsoft’s bug bounty program, which has been in operation for ten years and has paid out a total of $63 million to security researchers. The program initially faced internal resistance but has since experienced explosive growth, with Microsoft doubling the number of bounty reports, program participants, and awards in fiscal year 2019 compared to the previous year. In July 2020, the program introduced scenario-based categories with higher awards for more serious vulnerabilities. The success of the bug bounty program can be partially attributed to Katie Moussouris, who played a key role in convincing Microsoft’s leadership of its importance, despite initial reluctance to pay researchers for bugs. Bug bounty programs, however, do not necessarily make software more secure. Moussouris believes that developers should focus on secure software development and bug prevention, with bug bounty programs and vulnerability disclosure programs serving as supplementary measures. To improve the efficacy of bug bounty programs, Moussouris suggests implementing a feedback loop where learnings from the program inform secure development processes and measuring program success based on meaningful metrics such as the reduction or elimination of vulnerability classes and decreased mean time to repair for critical flaws. Furthermore, bug bounty programs should be integrated with incident response and threat intelligence to monitor and respond to real-time attacks.