Although the program has been operating privately for a while, Sony's Bug Bounty program is now being opened to the public. The program offers hackers a significant sum of money if they can find any security flaws or issues with either the PlayStation Network or the PS4.

Sony has updated its HackerOne profile to highlight a number of areas where it would love to find security flaws. Specifically, the PlayStation Network and PS4 are on the docket, but the company is also interested in finding issues with its existing domains like store.playstation.com and my.playstation.com.

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Hackers are expected to operate in good faith and not to exceed the boundaries of the program by making social engineering attacks or compromising employee accounts. Basically, Sony has a set of rules for how it wants hackers to find exploits and vulnerabilities and there are some areas that it deems off-limits.

Those hackers that do find security issues will be rewarded for their efforts. At present, Sony lists all of its potential bounties as “Critical,” which means they have the highest priority and are eligible for the largest cash payment. Any Critical security issues with the PSN that hackers find will result in a $3,000 payment. Whereas the PS4 is a lot more valuable and commands a $50,000 payment should hackers find a vulnerability.

While there are a variety of areas that Sony would like to find vulnerabilities, the PS4 is more focused. If hackers can find issues with the console's system or its PS4 operating system, then the hacker will be rewarded. However, there are some specific areas that Sony wants hackers to target, which can be found on the HackerOne post.

As mentioned, Sony has been operating a similar program behind the scenes but is now opening the Bug Bounty up to the public. Why exactly the company chose to do so now is not clear, but it could have something to do with the upcoming release of the PS5 this holiday 2020.

Sony will want to make a strong impression with its next-gen console and any vulnerabilities within its services will likely hurt that appeal. Most can remember the PSN hack and network outage of 2011, which kept the service offline for 23 days and saw 77 million accounts exposed.

No doubt Sony has made serious efforts to boost its security in the time since the outage, but that doesn't mean that the service is completely vulnerability-free. But it's better to have someone find an issue, report it for payment, and then Sony fixes it, rather than someone else finds it and exploits it. And any who do find an issue with the PS4 stand to make a good amount of money.