Nintendo Offering Up To $20,000 Bounty For Hackers To Find 3DS Vulnerabilities

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Dec 08, 2016 08:32 AM EST

Nintendo has welcomed researchers and hackers to find a bug with prize reward of $20,000. In an attempt to curb vulnerabilities in the Nintendo 3DS platform, the bug bounty program hosted by HackerOne based in San Francisco which is a security staff from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. 

Ars Technica explains about the Bug Bounty Programme which invites researchers to dig into the Nintendo 3DS Platform and search and address security vulnerabilities exchanged for prize bounty of £15,000 that is $20,000.  The programs include cheating methods, dissemination of inappropriate content to children, piracy, etc. Other potential hardware investigation includes ARM11 Kernel takeovers, etc.

Research who want to sniff out the vulnerabilities will have to submit a written description of the issue as well as functional code and other important details mentioned on its website are the pre-requisites for submission. Nintendo will allow three weeks of time for submission of code after submission of initial reports and depending on the scope and severity of the vulnerability, the prize will range between $100 to 20,000.

Destructoid further escalated that other folks have been blaming gaming and another platform about being vulnerable to attacks, however, Nintendo is trying to curb vulnerabilities and hence, the Bounty Programme has being organized. However, it is not known how Nintendo will calculate the prize amount. The best thing about the bounty program by Nintendo is even if the console maker didn't hand over the prize amount, the own who had submitted information about any vulnerability will get Perpetual, Non-exclusive, Sublicensable, Worldwide, royalty free license. 

Nintendo has always been vulnerable concerning its security that resulted in several security breaches over the past few years which forced Nintendo to develop their own software and games backup. Cubic Ninja by Ubisoft reported exploitation by hackers leading to jump in eBay prices for the game. Then, VVVVVV reported exploitation by the hackers that led to discontinuing the product from the Nintendo eShop soon after the attack came to light. 

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