Microsoft announces its own Black Hat-like hacking event with big rewards for AI security

Microsoft is creating an in-person hacking event, Zero Day Quest, which it says volition beryllium the largest of its kind. The lawsuit volition physique upon Microsoft’s existing bug bounty program, and incentivize probe into high-impact information flaws that tin impact the bundle powering unreality and AI workloads.

“This caller hacking lawsuit volition beryllium the largest of its kind, with an further $4 cardinal successful imaginable awards for probe into high-impact areas, specifically unreality and AI,” explains Tom Gallagher, VP of engineering astatine Microsoft’s information effect center. “Zero Day Quest volition supply caller opportunities for the information assemblage to enactment manus successful manus with Microsoft engineers and information researchers — bringing unneurotic the champion minds successful information to share, learn, and physique assemblage arsenic we enactment to support everyone safe.”

The Zero Day Quest starts today, with Microsoft accepting submissions for probe that is eligible for bounty awards. These submissions volition suffice information researchers for a spot astatine the in-person hacking lawsuit astatine Microsoft’s office successful Redmond, Washington successful 2025.

Microsoft is doubling the awards that it pays retired for AI bounties, and it’s besides offering information researchers nonstop entree to Microsoft AI engineers and the company’s AI Red Team — a radical of experts that probe Microsoft’s AI systems for failures.

“As portion of our ongoing commitment to transparency, we volition stock the details of the bugs erstwhile they are fixed truthful the whole industry tin larn from them — aft all, information is simply a squad sport,” says Vasu Jakkal, firm vice president of information astatine Microsoft. Any captious vulnerabilities volition beryllium shared done the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program, and Microsoft plans to stock immoderate learnings crossed Microsoft to amended its unreality and AI security.

This caller information lawsuit comes aft Microsoft has embarked connected its largest ever information transformation. Microsoft made information its fig 1 precedence for each employee earlier this year, pursuing years of information issues and a scathing study from the US Cyber Safety Review Board.

Microsoft Security Exposure Management is besides launching today, providing defenders with a graph-based presumption of a business’ login credentials, permissions, and different security-related elements that tin place imaginable onslaught vectors.