SINGAPORE INVITES 300 HACKERS

Singapore Defence Ministry plans ahead by inviting hackers.

Singapore : In a first for the Singapore government, the defence ministry will be inviting about 300  international and local hackers-

To hunt for vulnerabilities in its internet-connected systems next year, in a bid to guard against ever-evolving cyber threats.

From Jan15 to Feb 4, these selected experts will try to penetrate eight of Mindef's  Internet-facing systems, such as Mindef's website. the NS Portal, and LearNet 2 Portal, a learning resources portal for trainees.

These registered hackers can earn cash rewards -or bounties- between S$150 and S$20,000 based on how critical the flaws discovered are.

Called the Mindef Bug Bounty Programme, it will be the government's first such crowdsourced  testing programme.

This follows an incident earlier this year when Mindef discovered that hackers had stolen the NRIC  numbers, telephone numbers and birth dates of  854 personnel  through a breach of its 1-Net system  -[The Strait Times / Asia News Network].