A man from Nebraska earned 100,000 euros in just one year with relatively little work. How did he do it?
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Sam Curry is a young man from Nebraska who earned 100,000 euros within a year. And that was with his 20-hour job. What is special about him is that he has a lot of experience in the computer field and looks for security vulnerabilities as a hacker. The BBC reported that he was able to make that much money with relatively little working time.
As a so-called “White Hat Hacker,” he can earn a lot of money, even though the competition is fierce. And the income is enough to easily finance other hobbies, as he explains.
As a “White Hat Hacker,” he earns a lot of money
What does a “White Hat Hacker” do? Although most people probably think of something negative when they hear “hacking,” it is something positive here. Because these hackers do not sell found security vulnerabilities on the dark web or other dubious sites to harm people, but sell them to companies.
Large companies like Google, Facebook (Meta), or Microsoft offer so-called “bounties”: If someone finds a security vulnerability, they report it to the respective company and receive the reward or bounty (in English, bounty) paid out.
Hackers like Sam Curry can earn a lot of money with this, depending on how severe the security vulnerabilities are. For some vulnerabilities, you can get several tens of thousands of euros. This can pay off with three or four vulnerabilities.
He explained in an interview with the BBC that hackers compete with each other for the best “bounties.” However, hackers usually work closely together. The “White Hat Hackers” form a large, global community, and he would know many people in dozens of different countries.
Sam Curry noted in a conversation with bugcrowd.com that the payment is just a bonus for him:
I am financially secure and can spend my time traveling and building side projects that I am personally interested in. I love hacking – the fact that someone pays me for it is just a bonus.
ChatGPT makes bounty hunting easier for many today
What does it look like today? With artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, the field of hackers becomes more complicated in various ways:
- For some, it is all the easier to develop malware or tools to harm people or to gain access to data.
- For others, it becomes easier to find errors and security vulnerabilities. A user earned thanks to ChatGPT in one go 40,000 euros.
- Many companies therefore spend a lot of money to convince hackers to sell the vulnerabilities to them rather than offering them on the dark web or other sites.
For people like Sam Curry, security vulnerabilities are likely still a lucrative job. Other people also earn a lot of money thanks to ChatGPT, but do not hack websites or companies:
A man earns more than 50,000 euros a year thanks to ChatGPT and that because of a simple app
