Facebook Boosts Bug Bounty Payouts for Account Takeover Flaws

Facebook has faced multiple challenges over the course of 2018 as it has struggled with inauthentic user behavior, abuse of private information and outright attacks where user accounts were hijacked. In an effort to improve user account security and mitigate hijacking threats, Facebook announced on Nov. 20 that it is increasing the awards it pays out to security researchers for responsibly disclosing flaws. The increases come via Facebook's bug bounty program, which provides financial rewards for researchers who report issues to the social networking giant. "Today, to encourage security researchers to work on finding high impact issues, we are increasing the average payout for account takeover bugs," Facebook's Bug Bounty team wrote in a note. "Our goal is to ensure that these vulnerabilities such as the one disclosed in September are reported to us in the most responsible and timely manner."