Securing ASP.NET: Find a Flaw, Get $15K -- Visual Studio Magazine

Securing ASP.NET: Find a Flaw, Get $15K

Microsoft's ASP.NET team is willing to pay $15,000 to developers who discover specific security gaps in .NET Core and ASP.NET.

By Michael Domingo
10/21/2015

Microsoft's ASP.NET team is turning to developers to help them to seek out and plug up security gaps in .NET Core and ASP.NET as the beta versions of those solutions are developed over the next three months. The bug bounty program starts October 20, and it "encompasses the latest beta version, beta 8 and any subsequent beta or release candidates released during the program period," according to ASP.NET security lead Barry Dorrans, in a blog post. For specific bugs, Microsoft will pay $500 up to $15,000.

The bug bounty program applies currently to flaws discovered within the beta 8 versions of .NET Core and ASP.NET running on Windows platform. At some point, those versions running on Linux and OS X will be included "once our cross platform networking stack matches the stability and security it has on Windows," notes Dorrans.

Developers who discover bugs do have to meet some criteria in order to obtain a payout. The vulnerability has to be original and a flaw that hasn't shown up in any vulnerability reports, and the flaw has to be well documented so that Microsoft's security researchers can reproduce the flaw as a proof of concept.

Template cross-site request forgery and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities pay $500, and remote code execution flaws can pay up to $15,000. Microsoft will pay out for other flaws as well: information leaks, spoofing, remote denial of service attacks, elevation of privilege, and security design flaws. Specific payouts and steps for submitting bugs to the bounty program are available on the Program Terms page in the TechNet Security Center site.

About the Author

You Tell 'Em, Readers: If you've read this far, know that Michael Domingo, Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief, is here to serve you, dear readers, and wants to get you the information you so richly deserve. What news, content, topics, issues do you want to see covered in Visual Studio Magazine? He's listening at [email protected].

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