Ethical hackers swarm Pentagon websites

Hackers are crawling all over the US Department of Defense’s websites. Don’t worry, though: they’re white hats, and DoD officials are quite happy about the whole thing.

Four years after it first invited white hat hackers to start hacking its systems, the Pentagon continues asking them to do their worst – and a report released this week says that they’re submitting more vulnerability reports than ever.

The DoD’s Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3) handles cybersecurity for the DoD, and is responsible for tasks including cyber technical training and vulnerability sharing. It also runs the DoD’s Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP).

The VDP emerged from the Hack the Pentagon bug bounty program that the military ran in 2016. That initiative was so successful that it continues to invite hackers to play with its systems. Last year, the Air Force even bought an F-15 to Defcon for hackers to tinker with. Next year, it plans a satellite.

These high-profile events punctuate a more modest but ongoing program that invites hackers to submit security vulnerability reports focusing on DoD websites and web applications. The DoD engaged its DC3 unit to run the continuous program and keep the ethical hacks rolling in.