If you’re good at breaking things (pretty much a prerequisite for working in the IT industry), something to consider is ethical hacking, and bug bounties.
Some companies offer cold hard cash. Others offer other items… such as United Airlines.
United Airlines Boeing 737-900ER on approach to Chicago O’Hare, Image Economy Class and Beyond
According to The Register, a 19-year-old security researcher called Olivier Beg found 20 bugs in the United code base – enough for him to cash out 1 million miles.
United launched a bug-bounty reward campaign last year, which offers different payouts depending on the severity of the bug or exploit found:
And as all frequent flyers are away, you can’t change your miles for cash. For some bug-hunters/white hats, this scheme isn’t attractive in the least (unless you have a magic way of converting United miles into food, rent, etc etc etc).
Although I think The Register has got it right with their headline:
Still, I’m sure the miles will be useful for attending conferences… or flying other airlines than United…
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So I guess he found 20 low level bugs? And now we will have two factor login security for Mileage Plus.
That’s enough for each of them to circle the globe five times.
Such awards, known as a “bug bounties” are paid to any hacker that can help United identify a problem with its system. Many companies and security firms offer bug bounties, including Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB, Tech30), but United says it’s the first airline to so. The miles are worth about $15,000 to each hacker according to experts. But offering frequent flyer miles instead of cash helped get the hacker community’s attention.
“I don’t usually do bug bounties for several reasons, but United made the reward seem worth the effort,” said Kyle Lovett, one of the winning hackers. He can’t disclose details of the bug he found, but he did say that it “wasn’t a trivial” vulnerability.