Tech firms seek to beat the hackers with ‘bug bounties’

Microsoft’s announcement that it is doubling its reward for reporting potentially exploitable vulnerabilities in its software to $100,000 (€92,000) makes it the latest of a number of the world’s top companies to offer “bug bounties”.

At the tech industry’s Black Hat 2015 security conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced a range of improvements to its software. It wants friendly researchers to find flaws before hackers do.

The company’s security architect, Jason Shirk, said the measures were aimed at bringing “defence up on par with offence”.