WASHINGTON: Hackers invited by the US government as part of a pilot program to find flaws with five Pentagon websites discovered 138 security vulnerabilities, Defence Secretary Ash Carter said Friday.
The "Hack the Pentagon" event, the first "bug bounty" in the history of the federal government, attracted 1,410 computer-savvy Americans, according to the Defence Department. The program cost $150,000, with about half of that going to hackers.
"It's not a small sum, but if we had gone through the normal process of hiring an outside firm to do a security audit and vulnerability assessment, which is what we usually do, it would have cost us more than $1 million," Carter said during a short ceremony at the Pentagon.
"Beyond the security fixes we've made, we've built stronger bridges to innovative citizens who want to make a difference to our defence mission."
The hackers were invited to find flaws with five public websites, including defense.gov, between April 18 and May 12.
During that period, the hackers reported 1,189 vulnerabilities, with 138 of them determined to be "legitimate, unique and eligible for a bounty."
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