On July 31st and August 1st, Microsoft will be judging a live “mitigation attempt” against Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11 during the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. This program encourages people to search for vulnerabilities in return for cash!
“Microsoft’s new bounty program encourages people to search for vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 11 Preview and Windows 8.1 Preview in return for cash from Microsoft. The two platform-wide bounty programs will pay up to $100,000 for a truly novel exploitation technique, and up to a $50,000 bonus for defense,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post.
Microsoft recently paid someone who found a bug in the recently released Internet Explorer 11 Preview for Windows 8.1, a bug that was confirmed and validated. Microsoft will pay up to $100,000 for a “truly novel exploitation technique” and up to a $50,000 bonus for providing defense.
Microsoft is looking for vulnerabilities that have memory corruption, since the potential of enabling remote code execution is greater. “Most memory corruption vulnerabilities that are found in Internet Explorer have the potential to enable remote code execution and therefore are likely to qualify for the $1,100 bounty,” Microsoft added.
“If the technique used to exploit the vulnerability is truly novel, then we would award the $100,000 Mitigation Bypass Bounty in addition to the $11,000 IE 11 Preview Bug Bounty,” the company adds.
In a recent blog post, Microsoft highlighted Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 and touted Internet Explorer 11 as the only browser to offer the best daily browsing experience across devices. In fact, IE11 was optimized for touch, mouse and keyboard.
Hit the source to check out the program. Give it a shot and you could earn a boat load of cash!
