LG Uplus (032640.KS) has become the first mobile carrier in South Korea to run a bug bounty program aimed at ethical hackers worldwide. The company will pay rewards to hackers who uncover security flaws, with the goal of identifying vulnerabilities that have so far gone undetected.
LG Uplus said it will work with the global bug bounty platform HackerOne to search for security flaws across all of its services, including mobile, internet and enterprise offerings, starting on the 24th.
HackerOne is a bug bounty platform that draws on some 2.4 million ethical hackers around the world. Through long-standing partnerships with the U.S. Department of Defense and many global big tech companies, it has demonstrated advanced vulnerability-detection capabilities and the ability to handle a range of security scenarios. A bug bounty is a system in which a company receives reports of security flaws in its services and information technology infrastructure from ethical hackers and rewards them for the vulnerabilities they find.
Since October 2024, LG Uplus has operated a bug bounty program with the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), identifying and addressing vulnerabilities reported by domestic hackers. This time, overseas ethical hackers who have passed identity and capability screening will take part, providing ongoing reports of potential security flaws that are difficult to detect within the country.
Hong Kwan-hee, head of LG Uplus's information security center and its chief information security officer (CISO), said the partnership aims to preemptively find and fix vulnerabilities the company has not yet identified, as telecom services increasingly touch overseas infrastructure. "We will take the lead in building a safe and transparent security ecosystem and in spreading a culture of responsible vulnerability management," Hong said.
