Talk:Bug bounty program

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

New incident[edit]

A new incident maybe notable to mention here: Bug Bounty Ethics -- Ahmed1684 (talk) 15:06, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Biography of Jarrett Neil Ridlinghafer[edit]

The history section of this page contained a biography of sorts of the Jarrett Ridlinghafer, who is credited with the idea.

I've cleaned up the original source information, see below, in the event someone wants to use is as a starting point to create a page about Jarrett Ridlinghafer.

I didn't create a page myself because:

  1. there are no sources for the information;
  2. the original text sounded like a fan piece or like it was written by someone close to Ridlinghafer; and
  3. it's not clear to me that Ridlinghafer is a person of enough note to warrant an encyclopedia entry.


“Jarrett Neil Ridlinghafer was technical support engineer at Netscape Communications Corp who came up with the idea for the Netscape Bug Bounty program.
Ridlinghafer worked in the technical support department as Employee #12 and later as "World-Wide Support Operations Manager" where he came up with many innovative and transformative programs and solutions between 1995 and 1999.
In early 1996, he was came up with the idea and coined the phrase "Bugs Bounty" for a program to reward product enthusiasts for fixing product bugs and bringing them to the attention of Netscape, after he realized that software engineers had been doing this for free and publishing the fixes or workarounds in the tech forums or on an unofficial Netscape FAQ site.
Technical forums were another one of Ridlinghafer's ideas. The company's technical support department had set them up to enable self-help through collaboration.
Another one of Ridlinghafer's ideas, of which there were many during his four year stint at Netscape, included:
  • the first ever "Artificial-Intelligence, Automated Email Response System";
  • the "Netscape Champions" (still alive today as the "Mozilla Champions");
  • the internal "Netscape Call-Tracking System";
  • the "Help" menu within the browser today was placed at the far right in the browser at his suggestion when it was about :::::to be left out of the browser completely; and
  • the "help.netscape.com" website whose name he helped come up with along with fellow Netscape engineer "Brian Kendig".
Netscape Bug Bounty program was launched in 1995 and was such a huge success it was mentioned in many of the books about Netscape's successes.
Since leaving Netscape, Ridlinghafer has spent his career designing and building state-of-the-art cloud data-center infrastructures including the Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) PS3 Online Data-Center 2004-2006 and the Cloud infrastructure, which was selected to host the Obama.mobi website for the 2008 Presidential Elections and as the MMAA "Mobile Platform of the Year" award also in 2008.
Ridlinghafer also speaks on many subjects from the In the Eye if the Storm: The Internet Revolution and Netscape, The future of the Internet, The Future of Cloud Computing, Infrastructure Security and has presented many webinars, written many articles, magazine stories and publications on Cloud Computing, the coming Second Internet Revolution & the Future of Technology many of which can be found on his blog http://cloudwiser.wordpress.com
Ridlinghafer continues to write, speak and consult at the executive level on both strategic cloud infrastructure issues and technology trends for both Fortune 1000 & Early-stage Startups and is the founder and CTO of his biggest and most ambitious tech startup ever, a "Virtual Think-Tank|Incubator|Accelerator" "Synapse Synergy Group, Inc." which will have the largest privately owned high-tech laboratory in the world.”

--ash (talk) 01:45, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Contested deletion[edit]

Actually, although this article is a bit messily written, bug bounties are a legitimate notable topic. Give me a minute to add some references here... --IagoQnsi 16:28, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think chance should be given to the contributor as it can be improved after performing some clean-up. WOWIndian Talk 16:36, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, but I can edit the article too; was there something wrong with my contribution that it needed to be undone? -IagoQnsi 16:43, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Of course you can edit the article and apology for that you it was a mistake ;) WOWIndian Talk 16:52, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No problem, I have restored my text to the new history section. -IagoQnsi 16:55, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, I've removed material that was

  1. redundant with content at software bug;
  2. a direct copyright violation of Google's Vulnerability Reward Program page;
  3. just simple repetition;

and we're left with two sentences. Anything to add? WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 17:59, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, Saitejdandge18 (talk · contribs) disagrees with my edits, and has restored all of his original content. Therefore I have marked the offending sections as copyrights violations, and have removed the text that was a simple repetition of text already on the page. Now I ask, why do we need a definition and etymology of the term bug here, when we have a full article on software bugs? Such content is called a content fork and is discouraged.
I believe there is an article to be written here: a description (without copyright violations) of the various models of bounty programs available, and the impact they are or aren't having in the security of the websites that implement them. That would be a useful article. What we have currently, not so much. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 18:28, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As a resource to visitors, this list of bug bounty programs from across the web could provide value on the page. It's the #1 ranked link on Google when searching for "bug bounty" or "bug bounty program". Disclaimer - I work for Bugcrowd. We continuously update this list as a resource to researchers thanks to contributors who inform us of new bounty programs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eatmorespinach (talkcontribs) 21:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Added the List of Bug Bounty Programs to External links - A comprehensive list of bug bounty programs from across the web. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eatmorespinach (talkcontribs) 00:41, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Bug bounty program. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:

  • Attempted to fix sourcing for //www101.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease48.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 19:35, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"First"[edit]

The Netscape programme discussed at length under "History" is patently not the first bug-bounty scheme, as claimed. Donald Knuth was offering reward cheques for bugs in TeX at least by the mid-80s, and probably well before (I can't actually find the date when he started his scheme).

At best, this Mr Ridlinghafer might have coined the name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.24.224.64 (talk) 01:32, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]