Mark Zuckerberg is working to make the Internet a more secure place, until now, a number of large technology companies have bug bounty programs to reward researchers and cyber enthusiast who contribute in the security of Internet by finding security holes in software or web application platforms, the social networking giant Facebook is the latest one to do so.
Facebook and Usenix have together implemented the Internet Defense Prize — an award recognizing superior quality research that combines a working prototype with great contributions to securing the Internet, Facebook announced Thursday at the annual USENIX Security Symposium in San Diego.
The researchers, Johannes Dahse and Thorsten Holz of Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, received $50,000 prize money by an award committee made up of Facebook and USENIX representatives. The committee saw a “clear path” for using the money to build the research into technology that could be implemented in the real world.
The committee is inviting researchers and security enthusiasts to submit their work to Facebook for consideration to be a future recipient of the Internet Defense Prize, and said that the award amount may increase depending on the strength of the submission, or it may hold onto the funds if no project meets the bar.