Security News > 2020 > January > Microsoft Offers Rewards of Up to $20,000 in New Xbox Bug Bounty Program
Microsoft is offering rewards of up to $20,000 for finding vulnerabilities in its Xbox gaming platform through its latest bug bounty program unveiled this week.
The Xbox Bounty Program is open to gamers, security researchers and basically anyone who can help the tech giant identify security vulnerabilities in the Xbox Live network and services and share them with the Xbox team, Chloé Brown, a Microsoft Security Response Center program manager, said in a blog post Thursday.
"The bounty program supplements our existing investments in security development and testing to uncover and remediate vulnerabilities which have a direct and demonstrable impact on the security of Xbox customers."
The minimum award for identifying an Xbox bug is $500. As is always the case in its bug-bounty programs, Microsoft will award submissions at the company's discretion and pay "Based on the severity and impact of the vulnerability and the quality of the submission," according to the program's guidelines.
Microsoft also prohibits a number of actions under its new Xbox bounty program, including any kind of DoS testing, performing automated testing of services that generates significant amounts of traffic, or gaining access to any data that does not entirely belong to the user.