Monday, July 15, 2013

Microsoft to pay first IE 11 Preview bug bounty to BlueHat security contest finalist

IDG News Service - Microsoft has already received several vulnerability reports that qualify for monetary rewards as part of the company's bug bounty program launched in June for the preview version of Internet Explorer 11.

The recipient of the first IE 11 bounty will be Ivan Fratric, a security researcher who earned second place and US$50,000 last year in Microsoft's BlueHat Prize contest for the development of defensive technologies. Fratric's entry into the contest was a system called ROPGuard, which can detect and prevent return-oriented programming (ROP) attacks.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Fratric worked as a researcher at the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing until October 2012, when he joined Google as an information security engineer.

"The security community has responded enthusiastically to our new bounty programs, submitting over a dozen issues for us to investigate in just the first two weeks since the programs opened," said Katie Moussouris, a senior security strategist with Microsoft's Security Response Center, Wednesday in a blog post. "I personally notified the very first bounty recipient via email today that his submission for the Internet Explorer 11 Preview Bug Bounty is confirmed and validated," she said, adding that this means "he's getting paid."

Moussouris did not disclose the identity of the first bounty recipient in the blog post, but she confirmed Thursday that it's Fratric in a Twitter message congratulating him.

Read more: NetworkWorld
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