Questions about private invites are the most common ones we get from hackers. What are they? How do I get them? Are private invites better than public bounties? In this post, we dissect what private invitations are, the different types of private invitations and how you can acquire them. .
How to receive general private invites with CrowdMatch
Long gone are the days of manually selecting individual hackers for standard bounty invitations, as CrowdMatch has drastically changed the security research landscape. This innovation was built in house to help provide our incredible crowd with new opportunities. CrowdMatch has been tested, reviewed, and tested again, making it a powerful solution that helps pair hackers with engagements. To top it off, we have a dedicated team that’s continuously analyzing the capabilities of CrowdMatch and comparing them with the crowd feedback that our hacker-facing teams gather. Essentially, you share, we listen. In the following, we break down what all of this means for you as a hacker on the Bugcrowd platform.
Here are some key factors that CrowdMatch considers when selecting hackers for private engagement invites:
- Valid submissions (yes, even duplicates and VDPs)
- Severity ratings of valid submissions
- Accuracy rating
- Skill tag matching
- 180-day time span of activity for the above-listed items.
Our proprietary algorithms certainly have weighted factor variance and deeply nuanced selection criteria. The key takeaway is that delivering regular valid submissions is the primary driver to get you noticed by the matcher.
We often hear questions about receiving new launch invitations (or “fresh invites” as they’re often referred to). New launch invitations are sent to a small group of hackers when an engagement initially opens for testing and submissions. The fierce competition is an often overlooked but significant factor in determining the number of new launch invites a hacker receives. The bug bounty scene has grown tremendously in recent years, and the bar is continuously being raised by the incredible minds and skills of the crowd. Don’t let this information deter you; we encourage you to continually upskill. If you’re looking for resources, check out our LevelUp series and learn from some of the best hackers out there.
Whether you have access to older long-standing private engagements or you’re just starting out and working exclusively on public ones, our best piece of advice is to explore, revisit, deep dive into targets, and keep reminding yourself that your efforts will not only land you bounties but also uplevel your skills!
How to receive special engagement invites
It’s time to let the proverbial domesticated feline out of whatever bag it was being kept: Bugcrowd offers much more than bug bounties and standard disclosure programs. Our system matcher can pair hackers and engagements together very well. However, there are certain circumstances that are a bit more high-touch; these are called special engagements. A special engagement is any engagement that requires additional layers of custom sourcing and/or special communications to recruit hackers based on their unique skills or other miscellaneous program owner requirements. Special engagements often result in the need for ongoing Hacker Success Team oversight and high-touch communication management with the sourced cohort.
Below are some of the niche special engagements we manage:
- IoT and hardware (both with physical and virtual devices)
- Commonly requires extensive knowledge of hardware, firmware, and how to attack a wide spectrum of devices.
- Attack Surface Management – Recon (ASM-R)
- You need to really know how to dig.
- Deep Dives
- Often involves highly complex web applications with a plethora of bugs that most don’t have the patience to find.
All of these require deep knowledge of specific target types, impeccable report-writing skills, and the ability to occasionally test artifacts, such as intercept logs. While bounties are still available for many of these special engagements, if no bounties are found due to a high degree of difficulty, we work with the program owner to offer different solutions. There’s typically a guaranteed payout for extensive report delivery on tested assets, methods, analysis of potential weak points, and areas of interest that may provide value to the program owner’s security team. These special engagements require significant preparation and are highly limited to very small groups of hackers—often fewer than five hackers per engagement! Therefore, they are also highly selective and require extensive manual review of submission quality. Many also have strict compliance requirements, such as platform ID verification and background checks.
These opportunities sound exciting, right? These invitations are rarer, but they are growing in number. We want to make sure you’re aware they exist because such engagements may be the type of security work you’re looking to get involved in or perhaps striving to reach!
Other ways to get noticed by Bugcrowd
We offer a variety of different special engagements, live events, and other unique opportunities. Most of these can’t be shared or broadcasted due to non-disclosure or unique compliance reasons, but we comprehensively review a variety of data points based on the type of upcoming engagement. Below are the key items we take into strong consideration when making special selections:
- Historical submission data
- Regular/consistent submissions
- All-time average priority level of 3.0 or lower.
- Submission data for the specific organization’s upcoming engagement
- For example, Organizations X and Y are running a bash with Bugcrowd, so high-level submissions for Organizations X’s and Y’s previous and ongoing engagements will be reviewed.
- Quality and level of professionalism
- Behavior on the platform, such as escalations and the attitude with which they’re handled
- Public demeanor through social media posts
- Interactions with Bugcrowd staff and other members of the crowd
- Read more about that HERE.
- Community involvement (a plus)
- Security conference presentations
- GitHub tool-building or other code contributions
- Involvement in special research projects
- Content curation with the purpose of helping fellow hackers.
Due to the nature of these events and the dynamic needs of the program owners, meeting all of the above criteria does not guarantee an invitation of any type to discreet engagements or events, but this would definitely increase your chances of selection. More importantly, some of these points are markers of ongoing success on the platform and beyond!
Straight-laced and methodical or perhaps quirky and nuanced—no matter your approach and personality, a professional attitude, clear reporting, and a willingness to contribute to the community are the driving forces behind security innovations and development.
Are private invites better?
Some of you reading this are already thinking, “Okay Bugcrowd, how do I get more valid submissions if I don’t get private invites?!” We’re here to put to rest the myth that private invites are where all of the opportunities are. These invites may offer exclusive and niche hunting opportunities, but they’re often scaled down because the program owners and their teams have grown accustomed to running bounty engagements with Bugcrowd. There are often associated restrictions that limit crowd testing, such as geolocation or background check requirements.
Successfully hacking on public engagements is the absolute best way to get private invites. Many of these public engagements are often from incredibly well-established organizations on the Bugcrowd platform and have wider scopes and/or more robust bounty rewards. Also, there are many to choose from! Many highly successful bug bounty hunters hunt exclusively on public engagements. This is because these well-established public engagements are often regularly undergoing system changes or incorporating new scopes due to merger and acquisition activity. This creates a treasure trove of bugs to be found.
Conclusion
The security community continues to be built by unique humans all over the globe, forming a beautifully chaotic mesh of perspectives and approaches to exploiting targets and reporting vulnerabilities before threat actors can get to them. Hackers have fought an uphill battle for decades to reach a place where vulnerabilities can safely be reported at a scale bounty platforms have been able to facilitate. Bugcrowd will continue to advocate for the hacker community and strive to maintain a strong working relationship between organizations and hackers. Thank you for helping us do this!
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