Facebook and Google have partnered to launch a new conference for the researchers interested on discovering and reporting vulnerabilities.
Called BountyCon and mainly aimed at helping the two better identify new researchers in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as on incentivizing their existing bug bounty community, the conference is scheduled for March 30-31 in Singapore.
The two-day event is invitation-only and will feature some of the top bug hunters from the programs run by both Facebook and Google, who will “share practical tips for discovering and reporting high-quality vulnerabilities.” A live hacking event on the Internet companies’ respective platforms will also be hosted.
The concept of the event is to help build a better relationship with the security community, while also welcoming broad participation from new researchers.
Researchers interested in attending can participate in a Capture the Flag competition (CTF) that runs on both Facebook and Google through February 20. Hidden flags have been placed throughout both platforms for interested researchers to discover.
The CTF competition is meant to determine the top 20 bug 'hunters' to be invited to attend the conference. Flags can be discovered “by means of general bug hunting reconnaissance techniques” and no cooperation between participants is allowed, Facebook says.
Those who discover flags on either platforms can report them to Facebook on this page, to earn points. The complete set of rules for the competition is available on this page. Flags can be submitted until 11:59:59 pm Pacific Time on February 20, 2019.
“As with most CTF challenges, the more flags a researcher finds, the higher the score will be. We will invite people to attend BountyCon from among the highest scoring researchers, and we will cover airfare and accommodations in Singapore. In the event of a tie, the researchers with the lowest cumulated submission time will be selected,” Facebook notes.
The conference is mainly aimed at researchers from the Asia-Pacific region, but anyone interested can participate “for a few reserved spots that we are holding for the top worldwide participants who earn the most points,” Facebook says.
The two-day conference will take place just two weeks before SecurityWeek’s 2019 Singapore ICS Cyber Security Conference, an event that will take place on April 16-18, dedicated to serving critical infrastructure and industrial Internet stakeholders in the APAC region.
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