Sony has kicked off a bounty program designed to test the security of PS4 and PSN. The platform holder is interested in a wide variety of bugs and potential security vulnerabilities. The PS4’s critical issues have the highest bounties by far, at $50,000. Overall, Sony is willing to pay a lot more for PS4 vulnerabilities compared to those found within PSN or its various PlayStation websites. That is understandable, though determining which report is serious enough/deserves the advertised bounty is entirely at Sony’s discretion. On its Hacker One page, Sony asks researchers to act in good faith, and promptly notify the company of any vulnerabilities they identity. It also asks that they leave it enough time to properly investigate their reports. So far, Sony paid out $173,900-worth of bounties. Sony’s program is not unlike those of other game publishers, such as Rockstar, who routinely pay out thousands to white hat hackers who identify security problems with their software and services.
