New rewards program developed by Microsoft, for those who detect serious security problems, paying up to $ 250.000 for the most critical problems.

We could baptize this year as the year of computer insecurity and vulnerabilities. This year began with the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities, which despite affecting mainly Intel, also affected AMD and ARM. A few days ago we learned that all processors based on the Zen architecture, or what is the same, Ryzen, Threadripper and EPYC, have thirteen vulnerabilities at the silicon level. This above all is a headache for Microsoft, since Windows is the most used operating system in the world and they must develop solutions to minimize these vulnerabilities.

Microsoft seeks power that users look for vulnerabilities, to find security problems. A reward of up to $ 250.000 is offered for those who detect major security holes. Logically, we must bear in mind that they will not give us the money like that, without more, for this, we must justify the work.

This type of program is quite common. The program will be in force until December 31 of this year. They are mainly looking for vulnerabilities similar to Specter and Meltdown. We will have to look for security problems that have not been detected and disclosed. The goal is clear, to make our systems as secure as possible.

The scale of rewards will go from $ 25.000, for those with 'less' impact to $ 250.000, for the most serious that can be detected. They not only focus on looking for security problems at the hardware level, but also at the software level. There are also significant rewards for those who detect issues related to Edge.

Microsoft, Intel, AMD and all software manufacturers and developers are aware that the sooner a security problem is detected and the sooner it is corrected, the better, because it seeks to anticipate hackers, who could take control of the systems , steal key information and find out what else.

Source: hackread