Blizzard Games Wins $8.5 In Damages And Google Bug Bounty Fail

Following the news about Blizzard Gaming that has won $8.5 million copyright damages against German company Bossland. Which creates “cheats”, “hacks” to give gamers unfair advantage, Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at web security firm, High-Tech Bridge commented below.

Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at High-Tech Bridge:

“This is a very interesting case, however it’s not really a case of criminal hacking, but rather of an unlawful enrichment in violation of third-party intellectual property. In pure cybercrime cases, intruders (i.e. defendants in the court) are almost always unknown, and their identification is either technically impossible or economically impractical. Another important question in the particular case, is whether the German company will be able to pay, and if it will pay the compensation. Being headquartered and physically located in Germany, they can continuously try to delay the payment.”

Google’s bug bounty fail is something to learn from

With last week’s announcement that Google’s Android hacking contest failed to attract exploits, is something that Ilia Kolochenko can comment on if you are doing a follow up story.

It’s not long since Google raised their standard vulnerability bounties, in some cases raising them by an impressive 56.7 per cent, although it’s not clear whether the status of The Project Zero Prize fed into this rise, but maybe it did.

Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of High-Tech Bridge commented at the time: “This potential ‘pay-rise’ for white hat hackers tells something for certain – that Black Hats are paying more for vulnerabilities, and even the highest bounties offered by Google and Microsoft are no longer competitive with what cybercriminals can offer now.”

“The rise in bounty clearly means that talented White Hat security researchers are too busy with their well-paid daily jobs to bother spending time hunting risky bounties (even if you find a flaw, but someone has found it one minute before you – you will get $0).”