Of all government agencies to be compromised, the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) fell victim to a targeted security breach back in February, where the personal data of around 850 national servicemen and ministry employees was stolen.
Though it was fortunate that hackers failed to make away with classified military information, Mindef isn’t going to let that crap happen again. It’s going full-on Mr. Robot by inviting about 300 hackers from around the world to test its systems for vulnerabilities.
Not the bad ones, obviously — it’s engaging white hat hackers, who are really just computer security specialists who intentionally break into protected systems and networks to test and assess their security. They use their L33T skills for good by helping expose vulnerabilities before the actual malicious ones (black hat hackers) can detect and exploit them.
Mindef is even offering monetary rewards — from S$150 to S$20,000 — to hackers who are able to find the bugs in their system, in a first for a government agency in Singapore. The Mindef Bug Bounty Programme will run from Jan 15 to Feb 4 next year, facilitated by international bug bounty company HackerOne, who has done work for the likes of Intel, Twitter, and the United States Department of Defence.
The hackers will be invited to break into the likes of the Mindef website, NS Portal, the Singapore Armed Forces’ internet email service, and other Internet-facing systems.
“It is important to strengthen our defenses against the increasing number and sophistication of cyberattacks,” wrote Mindef in a press release.
“The programme uses an innovative, effective and fast, yet responsible crowd-sourcing approach to test and enhance Singapore’s defense networks and systems against cyber threats.”
