The Defense Department announced Thursday it would partner with San Francisco-based company HackerOne for its upcoming challenge to "hack the Pentagon," and interested hackers can sign up for the challenge right now on the initiative's new website.
For this "bug bounty" program, up to $150,000 is up for grabs if hackers find security holes. The size of each payment will depend "on a number of factors," the Pentagon said.
The military announced the program earlier this month, which challenged outsiders to try and find bugs and security vulnerabilities in Pentagon systems. In a statement on Thursday, DoD said the several weeks-long program would be led by HackerOne, a venture-backed company with a security reporting platform that's used by everyone from Facebook to IBM.
"This initiative will put the department's cybersecurity to the test in an innovative but responsible way," Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement. "I encourage hackers who want to bolster our digital defenses to join the competition and take their best shot."
The idea to bring outsiders in to try and hack Pentagon systems is a first, though it's pretty common for corporations, which often hire cybersecurity companies to try and break into their computer networks and physical locations, which is called penetration testing.
"Collaboration and transparency with external finders has become essential to securing connected software on the Internet,” HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos said in a statement. "Embracing the hacker community is not only a watershed move by the Pentagon, among the world’s most powerful organizations, but also signals deeply promising progress for all of software security."
It's important to note that the Pentagon is starting small, emphasizing that no "critical, mission-facing computer systems" will be involved in the program. Instead, a few of the DoD's public websites will be put to the test by whoever signs up, and they'll need to undergo a background check first.
The "Hack the Pentagon" program will start on April 18 and run until May 12.
