 Monday, December 21, 2020 in Security  1 Comment |  |  These hackers are finding security bugs – and getting paid for it. That's changing the dynamics of cybersecurity.
The first time Katie Paxton-Fear found a bug, she thought it was just luck.
One of her friends had signed her up for an event in London, where hackers aim to find the vulnerabilities in a particular piece of software.
Without any experience of cybersecurity, beyond being a programmer and developer, she found one bug - and then another. "To be fair, I thought it was a fluke," she says. But since then she's found 30 more security bugs.
"It's kind of like playing Sherlock Holmes," says Paxton-Fear.Nearly half of hackers describe themselves as self-taught. "You feel like a detective, going in rooting around and saying, 'That looks interesting', and having a stream of clues," she says. "And, when you get all the pieces neatly together, and it works and there's a bug there – it's the most thrilling experience ever."
But unlike a hacker looking for vulnerabilities to cause damage or steal data, Paxton-Fear is a bug bounty hunter. The bugs she finds are reported to the companies that write the code.
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