It is the first time that an airline has offered a bug bounty scheme that instead of cash, offers friendly hackers between 50,000 and 1 million frequent flyer miles depending on the severity of the vulnerabilities they unearth.
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“Bug Bounties” was begun in May by United Continental Holdings Inc (NYSE:UAL).
“We are committed to protecting our customers’ privacy and the personal data we receive from them, which is why we are offering a bug bounty programme, the first of its kind in the airline industry”.
United Airlines has set up a bug bounty programme, which rewards hackers with air miles, in a bid to beef up its cyber security standing.
United confirmed with Reuters that it has paid out two awards worth 1 million miles each, worth dozens of free domestic flights on the airline. In addition to helping to keep the carrier’s websites secure, the program is also estimated to be cheaper than hiring outside consulting firms. However, officials at trade group Airlines for America commented that most of the United States airlines had a program to test their web security system, even if they didn’t officially announce it.
Two hackers have been rewarded with a million free airmiles each after they exposed potential security issues with an airline’s website.
“We believe that this program will further bolster our security”, United said in a statement. He can’t disclose details of the bug he found, but he did say that it “wasn’t a trivial” vulnerability. “There actually aren’t that many companies in any industry outside of technology that do bug bounties”.
After submitting what he described as a couple of “lame” glitches, he was surprised to realise that he qualified for the airline’s largest payout, reports My Fox Tampa Bay. “Wow! @united really paid out!”
“I did not expect to qualify for a full million”, he said.
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The USA airline has been hit by a series of high-profile cyber gaffes over the past few months, including one instance of a security expert claiming to have hacked into his plane’s avionics through the in-flight entertainment, and two separate occasions where technical faults grounded United Airlines planes nationwide.
