More and more, we see hackers collaborating in teams to get the job done. According to our 2019 Inside the Mind of a Hacker report, 35% of the hacker community say they have previously collaborated with other hackers and want to collaborate again in the future. 50% say they haven’t previously collaborated but are open to it in the future. That means nearly 85% of security researchers are either already collaborating or looking to collaborate on bug bounty submissions this year.
Bugcrowd is invested in enabling the collaboration of researchers throughout the security research process. With that, today we’re very excited to launch a new feature, Researcher Collaboration! Now available on all Bugcrowd public and bug bash programs, this first release enables multiple researchers to work together, split rewards and points, and submit vulnerability reports via the Crowdcontrol platform. Once the submission is reported, all collaborators have shared access and will split applicable rewards (both monetary and points). Each collaborator will see the submission as their own, and it will show up on the customer side as apart of that submission.
This shared access will provide researchers transparency and security in how the reward split is completed, no longer needing to manage transfers outside of platform (often with another set of fees). Collaboration will ensure your Bugcrowd account will get the benefit of all submissions that you work on.
Bugcrowd has always believed the Crowd’s ingenuity to be crucial in finding vulnerabilities that no other tool or tester could. Our customers have seen great success thus far, but the opportunity to capture more of this ingenuity through collaboration was still on the table. To date, this success has been made with researchers acting as independent agents to one another. But as the community already knows, through CTFs and bug bashes, working together can result in improved results. With a shared goal and a mix of skills sets, we’ve seen these groups achieve results well beyond that of an individual. Going beyond the end-result, learning and camaraderie enable researchers to grow as individuals and perform at their highest levels.
We’re excited to see who amongst our Crowd takes advantage of this new feature, who joins our platform in collaboration with others, and how you all are able to combine your skills to make more impactful submissions.
Visit our documentation page here to learn more about how Researcher Collaboration works.
