The US State Department is offering bounties of up to $10 million for information that helps it catch state hackers trying to meddle in the 2020 presidential election.
The Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program is offering money for any information that could lead to the identification or location of hackers.
State-backed hackers from Russia, China, and Iran have already been detected trying to interfere with the 2020 election.
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With less than four months to go until the presidential 2020 election, the US has decided to offer a $10 million bounty to anyone who can find foreign hackers trying to meddle in the election.
The State Department on Wednesday announced its Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program is offering bounties on any information that could lead to the identification or location of: "any person who works with or for a foreign government for the purpose of interfering with US elections through certain illegal cyber activities."
Specifically the reward applies to foreign hackers who are found to be in violation of Section 1030, title 18 of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which essentially criminalizes hackers gaining unauthorized access to computers.
The State Department said it will pay out bounties of up to $10 million, but gave no details on how pricing would be pegged to quality of information.
ZDNet reports this is the third reward offered by the RFJ for foreign hackers this year: In April it offered a $5 million reward for information on North Korean government hackers, and in July it offered two bounties of $1 million apiece on two specific Ukrainian hackers.
Hacking from foreign nations became a huge issue during the 2016 election after Russian hackers stole and leaked emails and documents from Hillary Clinton's campaign. Russian state-backed efforts to interfere in the 2020 election were detected in February, and in June Google caught China and Iran-backed hackers trying to compromise the Trump and Biden campaigns.
Whargod on August 6th, 2020 at 14:41 UTC »
That $10M sure could go a long way in improving IT infrastructure and security for the elections.
TONKAHANAH on August 6th, 2020 at 14:30 UTC »
I hope this article is just misinformed because this is not how hacking bounties typically work.
Tyipiclaly a company or organization will put a bounty up for any security loop holes and white hat hackers will attempt to find any flaws or holes in said system. Should they find any flaws that would potentially grant access to give info, they'd present their findings to the company to retrieve said bounty.
This.. This is just silly
MoriSummers on August 6th, 2020 at 13:12 UTC »
PR bullshit. This completely ignores the dynamics of how foreign countries get their agenda implemented. At this point, there are so many hackers and paid trolls out there that getting rid of any number of them is likely to be meaningless. We need to educate our population properly on seeing through bullshit and fix the way we vote. Not play this stupid game of whack a mole.