Hacker Frequently Asked Questions

If you’re new to bug bounties you may be interested in reading some guides and articles from our researcher community. If you have any questions or need help, join the Bugcrowd Forum and post your question.

Make sure to fill out your profile information to tell the community a bit more about yourself. Many people use this page to show off their skills, as well as link to their personal websites & twitter accounts.

The Bugcrowd community team is here to make sure your bounty hunting experience is an awesome one. Whether you need help, have ideas or just want to say hello, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Have a question about a bug bounty program or your submission?

Email [email protected]

Valid and accepted bugs submitted to a paid bounty program will result in a payment to your account. After your bug is accepted by the program owner, your reward will be paid out the following Wednesday. Note that to be paid on time, you will need to be rewarded by 12:00am PT Wednesday morning in order to guarantee prompt payment.

Bugcrowd currently supports payments via Paypal and Payoneer. Please make sure to add either your Paypal account’s email address or sign up for a new Payoneer account in your Bugcrowd researcher account settings.

Have more questions about getting paid? Reach out to [email protected] team for more information.

Bug submissions that affect singular users, require interaction or significant prerequisites to trigger, non-exploitable weaknesses and “won’t fix” vulnerabilities all will receive a low priority rating.

Learn more about our community-driven Vulnerability Rating Taxonomy here.

Sometimes there can be delays in the confirmation of bug submissions. Bugcrowd works hard with our customers to speed up the confirmation process. Response time can vary, typically programs that are Bugcrowd Managed (signified by a Bugcrowd “b” logo on the ‘Report Bug’ button) have a faster response time.

If you have submitted a bug to a Bugcrowd Managed program and have been waiting for more than two weeks for your bug confirmation, please send an email to [email protected] and make sure to include your Bug Reference ID in your email.

The Bugcrowd Researcher Leaderboard is updated at the beginning of every month. A researcher’s rank on the leaderboard is based on their total number of kudos points earned over all-time and over the previous month.

Kudos points are rewarded to researchers who submit valid vulnerability reports to programs on Bugcrowd. Read this blog post to learn more about how kudos points are rewarded and calculated.

All researchers must adhere to the responsible disclosure guidelines that are outlined in the bounty program’s details and rules sections. Bugcrowd’s Disclosure policies apply to all submissions made through the Bugcrowd platform, including Duplicates, Out of Scope, and Not Applicable submissions. Customers may select Nondisclosure, Coordinated Disclosure, or Custom Disclosure policies to be applied to their program brief. Please refer to our docs for details on the different Public Disclosure Policies at Bugcrowd.

Improper disclosure can result in the researcher being removed from a program and can even result in removal from the Bugcrowd platform.

If you have any questions about a program’s disclosure policy or process, please email [email protected] and we will be happy to assist you.

Acceptance Rate is best explained as a comparison of valid to invalid reports.  For those that are interested in the details:

Let X = The count of all your valid and duplicate submissions, including P5 won’t-fix

Let Y = The total count of all your submissions, excluding any marked ‘not applicable’,  have not yet been reviewed, or have only been triaged but not confirmed.

Acceptance Rate = (X / Y) * 100

It’s a simple ratio of all of your accepted submissions to date, versus all submissions you’ve ever made. We exclude ‘not applicable’ submissions, which are those that have been marked by us or a customer as having been made in genuine and well-intentioned error. (And obviously we don’t include submissions that haven’t been finalized yet!)