Edgar Allan Poe once said that “poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” It’s a little-known fact that he was specifically referring to poems about cybersecurity when he said those famous words.
With Poe’s words beating through my soul like a tell-tale heart, I knew I had no choice. I must fulfill my birthright as the holder of Bugcrowd’s mighty pen and scream my prose into the void. Did I dip my quill in the ever-flowing fount of AI to aid my words? How dare you beseech me, lest you be cast into the shadows of the slop.
Definition: A five-line poem with a strict AABBA rhyme scheme and a bouncy, anapestic rhythm.
Offensive testing is the theme
Hackers search for bugs upstream
A preemptive approach
The attacker’s reproach
Extends the reach of your security team.
Definition: A lyric poem usually marked by exaltation of feeling and style.
An ode to the triagers
Who separate signal from noise
Flagging the critical
With quiet poise
Replicated the steps
From each attack chain
Validated its real
Before bad guys obtain
Duplicates?
They find those too.
Quickly turning around
An endless queue.
Praise to the triagers
Who work in plain sight
24/7
Day and night
Without you, each program
Would be out of sorts
Thank you for stopping us
From drowning in reports.
Definition: A traditional Japanese poetic form consisting of three unrhymed lines with a five, seven, five syllable structure.
Reward pool ran dry
Hackers found all our P1s
It’s time to top up.
Definition: A 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter with three quatrains and a couplet
Hackers are fueled by Red Bull and heart
Bugcrowd is a safe space to tinker
No matter what your shade is of “smart”
Research makes space for all types of thinkers.
We call these hackers the Crowd
Security minds all over the globe
Who couldn’t make us more proud
Findings bugs from the programs they probe.
Some prefer web targets, others IoT
Earn rewards and make the world safer
Searching for that P1 vulnerability
Their perseverance does not waiver.
For each report hackers submit
We’re so grateful they chose to stick with it.
Definition: A narrative poem or song characterized by a four-line stanza (quatrain) structure with an ABCB or ABAB rhyme scheme.
Sometimes AI buzz
Can make you sweat
Keep it simple and think:
A tool, a target, a threat
These three buckets
Help us sort out our goals
Aligning our strategy
And finding security holes
AI as a tool
Helps teams work smart
Automating what we can
Focusing on what needs heart
AI as a target
Is about bugs in an LLM
AI vectors enable a breach
Where bigger problems can stem
AI as a threat
Is the fear AI can cause harm
In bias and safety
We must be alarmed
So when AI discussions
Need a reset
Always remember, AI is
A tool, a target, a threat.
Covert testers are red,
The defenders are blue.
RTaaS is for lovers.
Simulate attacks with your boo.
Definition: A simple form where the first letter of each line, read vertically, spells out a specific word, name, or message.
Budding young hackers
Understand that in order to find bugs,
Guessing will not do.
Cybersecurity research
Requires time, curiosity, and the ability to find
Order in the chaos…or maybe chaos in the order?
With every bug found, we
Deter threat actors.
Definition: A serious, melancholic poem or song written to mourn, commemorate, and lament the dead or something that has been lost.
Today we all gather,
To mourn and regret
The death of the bug
Please forgive my upset.
I am a threat actor,
And my job used to be
A straightforward task
Finding a vulnerability.
I’d search the surface
And build my attack chain
And gather secret data
For my treacherous gain
But now people use Bugcrowd
And patch proactively
Offensive testing stops me in my tracks
And teams left worry-free
So let us mourn
The Crowd ruined my life
As a cyber thug.
Bugcrowd’s been around since 2012
And what strikes me the most
Is the way it feels.
Like “you can sit with us.”
Like “let’s learn together.”
Like “let’s break shit.”
Maybe it’s the community, the customers, the founder, the partners
The team, the leaders
This lightning strike
A little bit of everything.
You see Bugcrowders hanging around the booth at DEFCON
In t-shirts, orange sneakers
Passing out the best stickers on the floor
And you want to be part of it.
You want to bottle it up
The all-nighters trying to finally crack it
The belly laughs, the nostalgia
The accomplishments that made you beam.
The moments you thought
“I’m part of something bigger.”
And you say to yourself
“I was lucky to be there”
You fold your Grace Hopper t-shirt
And you pick up your laptop
Covered in a truly ridiculous amount of stickers.
You smile at the memories
And you’re grateful you came back.
You wonder what is ahead
You joke around with the friends you made along the way.
And you hack the f***ing planet.
Because limericks are my favorite.
There once was a content director
Who loved the security sector
Poems? She wrote ten
Just her and her pen.
The rhymes got her team to respect her.