A report by California crowdsourced cybersecurity platform Bugcrowd states that ethical hackers have warded off $27bn worth of cybercrime during the COVID-19 pandemic. The observation was in the Bugcrowd’s latest annual Inside the Mind of a Hacker report, which was published today.
The research is premised on the analysis of survey responses and security research conducted on the platform—May 1, 2020, to August 31, 2021. Besides, the research also relies on countless proprietary data gathered from vulnerabilities tracked in 2,961 security programs.
Almost 74% of respondents remarked that vulnerabilities increased during the pandemic, and hackers (80%) discovered vulnerabilities that they hadn’t discovered before the pandemic.
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More than half of hackers view restricted scope as an impediment in finding vulnerabilities. Another key point from the reports was that Hackers were skeptical about how effective point-in-time testing is ins securing the companies.
Commenting, Tim Wade, technical director of Vectra’s CTO team, said: “Security testers asserting that point-in-time testing cannot secure companies year-round is a reflection of what software delivery professionals have known for years and years – shorter, more agile cycles improve quality.”
Casey Ellis, founder, and CTO at Bugcrowd commented that for many platform hackers, earnings are rising, and payments are delivered faster.
“Our report found that 47% of ethical hackers earned more on Bugcrowd than they did in the previous period and the time between sending a report and receiving payment had decreased on the Bugcrowd platform, in some cases less than 30 minutes,” said Ellis.