The social networking giant has paid around $1.3M in 2014 as part of its bug bounty program. Even though the numbers are down from the year 2013 when the company paid around $1.5M in rewards to different security researchers. The average reward of bounties in year 2014 according to the Facebook is $1,788.
The concept of the program was to encourage the white hat hackers to find the vulnerabilities in the social networking site so the company can fix it before some blackhat takes advantage of that vulnerability. The total number of countries who are reporting the bugs on social networking giant is 123. Top 5 countries by volume whose researchers came forward and report the vulnerabilities on the social networking site include India, Egypt, U.S, U.K and Philippines.
India
With around total number of 196 bugs Indian security researchers tops the list just like in 2013. Indian researchers collected the average prize money of around $1,343.
Egypt
Surprisingly the second country by Volume of bugs reported to the Facebook is Egypt. Egypt security researchers reported around 81 bugs which is a far lesser number when you compare them with the Indian researchers. The average prize money that Egyptian security researchers collected is around $ 1,220.
U.S
The third on the list is United States who researchers earned around the average of $2,470 from the 61 bugs that they reported.
U.K
The security researchers from U.K also took full advantage of this bug bounty program by Facebook and reported 28 Bugs and earned the most averaged money from all countries $2,768. It is clear that Facebook bounty program benefited the most to U.K security researchers who collected the biggest sums of prize money.
Philippines
The fifth on the top 5 list is Philippines from where around 27 bugs are reported and the average award that Philippines security researchers collected is $1,093.
Facebook thinks they are going towards the right direction with this security strategy. Already around 100 new bugs are reported and fixed by the social networking sites this year. Another positive point is this that the researchers are now finding bigger and better bugs that before. Which keeps making Facebook more secure than ever.