This blog was written by Zowie Langdon, CTO of Blockport and originally appeared on the Blockport blog
In an effort to maintain and continuously improve security on the Blockport platform, our team is happy to announce the launch of a ‘responsible disclosure program’.
Apart from the safety benefits that this program provides for our exchange platform, we have launched this safety campaign at a public scale in order to increase overall awareness around cyber-security issues amongst cryptocurrency exchanges.
We have seen over the past year how several prominent cryptocurrency exchanges have been targeted by hackers. This is a serious issue within our industry.
We believe that awareness around safety issues is a primary step forward in overcoming safety threats. This responsibility lies primarily with us as an exchange platform, but also with our users, as well as other exchanges in the industry.
How does it work?
This program, coordinated in partnership with cybersecurity platform Bugcrowd, will enable security researchers anywhere in the world to discreetly notify us of a bug or potential vulnerability that they have discovered within our platform’s infrastructure. For doing this, security researchers will be rewarded in line with Bugcrowd’s point-reputation system.
A large component of this responsible disclosure program therefore relates to incentivizing users to participate in the mission of keeping their funds on the Blockport platform secure. Apart from the steps they can take to protect their account details, they can now also do this by actively testing the platform for vulnerabilities, thereby increasing security for other users as well.
What is a responsible disclosure program?
A responsible disclosure program allows security researchers and ethical hackers to discreetly report security issues on our platform to us. By doing so, they help us improve Blockport’s security and can receive varying rewards. The height of rewards are based on a certain severity level, and can be either monetary or points for increased reputation. In our case, we chose to set up the program with Bugcrowd and only reward the participants with points (for now).
Bugcrowd manages the initial communication with security researchers and provides a platform allowing management of the program itself and triaging of the reported issues. By collaborating with a company like Bugcrowd, Blockport can focus on fixing only the relevant security issues while Bugcrowd takes care of filtering irrelevant or inapplicable issues by communicating with the security researchers.
How does this fit into our greater vision?
Blockport is a community-focused platform. By opening up our responsible disclosure program to the public, we remain accountable to our community. Furthermore, this initiative provides security researchers within our community the opportunity to become directly involved with Blockport, whilst simultaneously rewarding them for their involvement.
As expressed by our Chief Technical Officer, Zowie Langdon:
“Our long term goal is to grow into the most user-friendly and widely-used decentralized exchange. As a company that’s young and still in quite an early stage, we acknowledge that we need community support on many levels to achieve this.”
The security of our users’ funds is something we take very seriously. We see it as our primary duty to empower everyone in our community to assist in keeping Blockport and its users secure.
Ultimately, we hope to emphasise the issue of safety amongst all cryptocurrency exchanges. By collectively making a point of safety, we are able to lift up the cryptocurrency space as a whole, specifically through increased measures in accountability, transparency, and credibility.
About Blockport
Blockport is an easy-to-use cryptocurrency exchange that bridges the traditional world of finance with the new digital economy of cryptocurrency.
The Beta allows you to buy, sell and exchange leading cryptocurrencies directly with Euro. If you haven’t signed up for an account yet, you can start trading immediately.
The Blockport’s native token (BPT) allows users to pay for discounted trading fees (Binance model) and ‘social trading’ features directly on the platform. BPT is currently only available on KuCoin’s exchange, but can soon be purchased directly at Blockport with Euro.
