The U.S. Marine Corps, in conjunction with HackerOne, kicked off its bug bounty program at Black Hat last week with 100 hackers participating in a nine-hour hackathon against various public-facing Marine Corps websites.
The event resulted in 75 unique security vulnerability reports being reported and more than $80,000 being awarded. The ethical hackers worked with Marines from the U.S. Marine Corps Cyberspace Command who represented both the offensive and defensive side of the Marine command.
“Our Marines need to operate against the best. What we learn from this program will assist the Marine Corps in improving our warfighting platform, the Marine Corps Enterprise Network,” said aid Maj.Gen. Matthew Glavy, Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command.
The Hack the Marine Corps program joins several other Department of Defense bug bounty challenges, including Hack the Army, Hack the Air Force, Hack the Pentagon and Hack the Defense Travel System. So far these and other DoD programs have resulted in 5,000 valid vulnerabilities being disclosed, according to HackerOne and the DoD.