Taking a bold step towards recognizing the efforts of white hat hackers, Facebook has launched a loyalty program. Dubbed Hacker Plus, this Facebook program will award additional payouts to dedicated hackers as bonuses and perks.
Facebook Hacker Plus Loyalty Program
In a recent post, Dan Gurfinkel, Security Engineering Manager at Facebook, has announced the launch of Hacker Plus. Facebook has introduced this as a loyalty program for hackers participating in their bug bounty program.
Regarding the kind of perks the researchers would get, the post reads,
As part of Hacker Plus, researchers will be eligible to receive additional bonuses on bounty awards, access to more soon-to-be-released products and features they can stress-test, and exclusive invites to our annual events.
The program has come into effect since October 9, 2020. For this, Facebook has categorized the hackers into five different categories or leagues, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. Facebook has made these categories based on quantitative submissions, scores, and signal-to-noise ratio over the past two years.
Under these categories, hackers will receive a 5% to 20% bonus (from bronze to diamond) on every bounty. Plus, the ones in higher leagues will receive exclusive invites and other perks as well.
Source: Facebook
More About The ‘Leagues’
Regarding the placement of hackers in different leagues, Facebook has elaborated on the criteria.
They will continue to evaluate the score, signal, and bug reports submitted during the past 12 months. The ones who have submitted more high-quality bug reports will climb up the leagues to avail more perks.
All researchers can check their current league status on their researcher profile page. They can also view the status of their progress towards reaching the higher league.
Details of the program are available on a dedicated Hacker Plus web page. Whereas, Facebook has also shared the detailed terms and conditions of the program.