Cardano Foundation Doubles Hacker Bounty Rewards for Finding Key Vulnerabilities in Its Blockchain

Cardano Foundation, an independent Swiss not-for-profit organisation that oversees the advancement of Cardano's smart contract-enabled blockchain and its ecosystem, has temporarily doubled the rewards offered in its bug bounty program in an effort to further boost the network's security. According to an update shared HackerOne — a vulnerability management firm that the Cardano Foundation has partnered with, bug bounty rewards have been doubled for the next six weeks ending March 25, 2022.

The non-profit foundation had partnered with HackerOne back in August 2021 with the largest bounty previously offered to hackers marked at $10,000 (roughly Rs. 7.5 lakh) for finding critical bugs in the backend of the Cardano node and up to $7,500 (roughly Rs. 5.5 lakh) for locating critical weaknesses in the backend of the Cardano Wallet. The potential bounty has now been doubled to $20,000 (roughly Rs. 15 lakh) for critical vulnerabilities affecting Cardano nodes.

Other vulnerabilities affecting nodes may grant white hat hackers rewards between $10,000 (roughly Rs. 7.5 lakh) and $800 (roughly Rs. 60,000). On the other hand, vulnerabilities affecting Cardano wallets can offer rewards ranging from $500 (roughly Rs. 37,500) to $15,000 (roughly Rs. 11 lakh) for exploits deemed critical.

The Cardano Foundation has detailed that hackers must provide detailed reports with reproducible steps to be eligible for these rewards. In its update, the Foundation wrote that it "looks forward to working with the security community to find security vulnerabilities in order to keep our businesses and customers safe."

The program, it added, aims to "strengthen the Cardano brand” while covering "essential items to access and manage crypto assets that are issued on the Cardano blockchain."

There is no doubt that the crypto industry is constantly growing and that the ecosystem needs the help of white-hat hackers to help projects in the system defend against vulnerabilities and hacks. A white-hat hacker, in simple terms, is an ethical security hacker who looks for loopholes or vulnerabilities that bad actors can take advantage of in a project. Due to the nature of the industry, white-hat hackers have increasingly become popular because of the unique role they play in the space.