In the past 20 years, bug hunting has transformed from a hobby (or maybe even a felony) to a full-time profession for tens of thousands of talented software engineers around the globe. Thanks to the growth in private and public bug bounty programs, men and women with the talent can earn a good living by sniffing out flaws in the code for applications and – increasingly -physical devices that power the 21st century global economy. 

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Bug Hunting Smart TVs To Supply Chain

What does that work look like and what platforms and technologies are drawing the attention of cutting edge vulnerability researchers? To find out we sat down with the independent researcher known as Sick Codes (@sickcodes). In recent months, he has gotten attention for a string of important discoveries. Among other things, he discovered flaws in Android smart television sets manufactured by the Chinese firm TCL and was part of the team, along with last week’s guest John Jackson, that worked to fix a serious server side request forgery flaw in a popular open source security module, NPM Private IP. 

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In this interview, Sick Codes and I talk about his path to becoming a vulnerability researcher, the paid and unpaid research he conducts looking for software flaws in common software and internet of things devices, some of the challenges and impediments that still exist in reporting vulnerabilities to corporations and what’s in the pipeline for 2021. 

As always,  you can check our full conversation in our latest Security Ledger podcast at Blubrry. You can also listen to it on iTunes and check us out on SoundCloud, Stitcher, Radio Public and more. Also: if you enjoy this podcast, consider signing up to receive it in your email. Just point your web browser to securityledger.com/subscribe to get notified whenever a new podcast is posted.