ByDavey Winder,
Senior Contributor.
I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again now: hacking is not a crime. Well, not all hacking, that is. Cybercriminal hacking most certainly is, and can prove extremely costly to the perpetrators as Joseph James O’Connor has just discovered. The type of hacker I’m talking about, however, is someone who participates in what used to be called white hat or ethical hacking, but as far as I’m concerned, it is just plain old-fashioned hacking at its very best: finding vulnerabilities in firmware and software before the criminals do. Yes, bug bounties. And Meta has just confirmed it has paid precisely these hackers a stonking total of $4 million this year so far for finding security vulnerabilities in WhatsApp.
Meta has confirmed that, as it celebrates the 15th anniversary of its bug bounty program, some $4 million has been paid to hackers in exchange for disclosing details of WhatsApp security vulnerabilities in 2025 alone. In total, Meta told me, it has awarded more than $25 million to 1,400 researchers from 88 countries over the years.
So impressive are some of the hackers involved that a number have since gone on to be employed by Meta in its security and engineering teams to continue their work in making Facebook and WhatsApp safer services for all users.
