Facebook paid $5 million for Bug Bounty

Facebook is celebrating fifth anniversary of its annual Bug Bounty program this year. Facebook’s Bug Bounty program ham terms of numbers, Facebook says it hasreceived more than 9,000 reports in the half of 2016. The social networking giant has paid a total of $611,741 to 149 researchers, which brings the cumulative total to $5 million paid over a period of 5 year to more than 900 researchers. India topped the list of countries in terms of payouts while USA and Mexico round up the top three spot. Facebook says going forward it will include information on how a specific biunty was awarded to a particular researcher. The blog post mentions the social network “will share more details on the thinking behind each award.” Facebook is trying to be more open about its ‘Bug Bounty’ program and also planning to share more educational resources and topics specific to Facebook’s products. been a major program of this kind and has earned support of broader community of security researchers. Facebook says it has paid a cumulative total of $5 million in the past five years.
In a blog post, Facebook notes it discovered many of the people on the team through this community bug bounty program. This year, Facebook is adding WhatsApp to its program with expanded payment option that includes Bitcoin.
The social network says it will also automate payment options this year in order to pay researchers faster than usual.