White Hat Hacker Receives $1.05 Million For Identifying Bug
Last updated on November 1st, 2022 at 12:07 am
Hacking attacks or attempts in the DeFi space have been on the rise this year. However, white hat hackers have stepped in attempting to help eliminate potentially nasty situations.
Recently, the largest bounty to have ever been paid to a white hat hacker was reported. The payment was made by Belt Finance to a white hat hacker for averting a bug crisis worth $10 Million.
Belt Finance is an automatic market marker (AMM) protocol that runs on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to provide a strategy for production optimization.
The white hat hacker made a statement to Cointelegraph, giving them information about how things unfolded. The hacker also came out to provide hints concerning bounty programs on the security environment of DeFi.
In his report, Alexander Schilndwein said that he was checking the bug bounties list on Immunefi before selecting Belt Finance as his next area of interest.
In his evaluation of Belt Finance’s smart contracts, the white hat programmer spotted a probable bug within the in-house bookkeeping meant to monitor the deposited funds of individual users.
Schilndwein then worked out the attack and was more confident that it was indeed a bug. This is why he produced a real proof-of-concept (PoC) to ascertain the bug’s existence and the threat it posed.
The white hat programmer also created an official report, which included the proof-of-concept alongside a thorough analysis of the threat before presenting it to Immunefi.
In response, the software security player immediately reacted, forwarding the same report to the Belt team, confirming its validity and initiating a bug fix. The bug crisis and the vulnerability that had been exploited was patched up immediately.
White Hat Hacker Receives Huge Reward
Schilndwein, known for his expertise as a white hat programmer, identified a flaw within the protocol of Belt Finance and made an official report to the team.
The discovery was a huge rescue for the company, prompting them to appreciate Alexander with $1.05 Million. A huge chunk of this token was given by Immunefi. At the same time, the extra $50,000 came from the Priority One program run by Binance Smart Chain.
Immunefi stands among the topmost leaders in the crypto software security industry, leading most projects to guarantee system and network protection.
Right from when they started, Immunefi has paid out more than $3 Million as a token of appreciation for white hat hackers. The compensation is for timeliness in spotting flaws and vulnerabilities within the technical infrastructure of smart contracts and cryptocurrency platforms.
Launched in July 2021, Priority One is a project by the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to enhance dApp security within the native ecosystem of the platform.
The initiative is a reflection of the Immunefi structure and provides an incentive fund worth $10 Million. This fund appreciates bounty hunters within the blockchain for successfully contributing to the aversion of security breaches throughout all 100 dApps.
While security breaches against Decentralized Finance remain an issue of concern, there have been propositions urging that the developing ecosystem gain a lot from such threats. Playing the long game, more flaws in the system would be identified, thereby promoting a consistent improvement of the system to a point where it is totally airtight.
Highlighting the areas of weakness on time is the way forward. This is why the bounty hunters are given tokens of appreciation every time they identify potential and existing threats before the worst happens.
Most bug hunters, Schilndwein included, support that bug bounties are indeed very important, and the role of bounty funds is huge in encouraging them.
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