News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Exploit broker Zerodium ups the ante with $500k to target Signal and WhatsApp. Parent comment

Re:Exploit broker Zerodium ups the ante with $500k to target... by jstanley on Thursday August 24, 2017 @05:22AM (#15088690)
> But why incentivize the weakening of secure systems?

Are you suggesting that the developers would put in a vulnerability on purpose, in order to sell it and collect the payoff?

Because, short of that, I can't see how exploit trading incentivises weakening of systems. It just incentivises people to find weaknesses.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Exploit broker Zerodium ups the ante with $500k to target... by confounded on Thursday August 24, 2017 @01:18PM (#15092011)
That's what first-party bug bounty programs do now.

The extra thing that a free market does is incentivises people to find weaknesses and sell them so that they can be maliciously exploited. When vulnerabilities are exploited instead of patched, secure systems are by definition weaker.

[ Parent | on HN ]