According to the Washington Post United Airlines “had rewarded two people with 1 million free miles of air travel each for discovering and disclosing software defects through the airlines “bug bounty” program…. so named because it offers bounties for the detection of software defects — is the first of its kind in the transportation industry, United claims.”  United Airlines new reward program is in response to the July 8, 2015 events that caused “United’s reservation system malfunctioned for two hours and did not allow passengers to check in for their flights.”  Actually United Airlines announced the program in May:

…pledging to give hackers between 50,000 and 1 million miles of free air travel for identifying and reporting bugs within the company’s software. (Tips or questions about the program can be sent to  bugbounty@united.com.)

Of course rewarding hackers is very old news since the US government has recruited hackers for decades, and many companies attend DefCon every August in Las Vegas looking for more hacker candidates.

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