Blackphone and Silent Circle Officially Announce Bug Bounty Program

GENEVA, Sept. 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackphone and Silent Circle today jointly announced the launch of their bug bounty program. Both companies' mission is to enable secure and private communications for individuals and enterprises. The use of bug bounties encourages skilled independent researchers to lend their knowledge to the user community around their products, by crowdsourcing penetration testing and application assessments, resulting in more secure and stable offerings.

"We have high expectations for security and privacy. In order to deliver on our expectations we must continually build a strong relationship with the security research community," said Dr. Daniel Ford, CSO of Blackphone and Silent Circle.

The Silent Circle program encompasses the client apps, network services, cloud infrastructure, web sites, and web services. Silent Circle will pay a minimum of $128 per security related bug. The full program guidelines can be found at www.bugcrowd.com/silentcircle.

The Blackphone program encompasses PrivatOS, update servers, and associated web portals. Blackphone will pay a minimum of $128 per security related bug. The full program guidelines can be found at www.bugcrowd.com/blackphone.

"Ensuring the privacy of its users is at the core of what do, making security of the utmost importance," said Toby Weir-Jones, CEO of Blackphone.  "By launching our Bugcrowd bug bounty program, both companies are assuring their customers that their smartphone and communication software is subjected to the latest testing and assessment techniques, while providing a form of compensation for successful contributors." 

About SGP Technologies SA
SGP Technologies is the manufacturer of Blackphone, the best privacy oriented Android phone for personal and enterprise use. Formed as a joint venture between the internationally recognized secure communications provider, Silent Circle, and award-winning Spanish mobile device manufacturer, Geeksphone, SGP Technologies is based in Geneva, Switzerland, with major operations in Madrid and Washington, DC, Silicon Valley, and cities throughout Europe, East Asia, and North America. For more information on Blackphone, please visit https://www.blackphone.ch.

About Silent Circle
Silent Circle is a global private communications service headquartered in Switzerland, providing a revolutionary device to device platform enabling private and secure communications via voice, video, text and file transfer on mobile devices. Silent Circle was co-founded by Mike Janke, former Navy SEAL and security expert; Phil Zimmermann, the world famous creator of internet encryption for voice and data and 2012 inductee into the Internet Hall of Fame; and Jon Callas, creator of Apple's whole disk encryption and co-founder of PGP Corporation.  For more on Silent Circle, go to: https://www.silentcircle.com

Blackphone & Silent Circle Press contacts:

W2 Communications (for US)
Dex Polizzi
[email protected]
Tel: +1 703-877-8106

Coonic (for EU/Spain)
Ainoa Brenes
[email protected]
Tel: +34 916 397 700/ +34 681 101 903

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SOURCE Blackphone