The BEST BugBounty Hackers in the WORLD

Spain may be Europe’s leader in youth unemployment, but we’re also world champions in bug bounty, and that deserves telling. To do it I sit down with part of the team that won HackerOne’s Ambassadors World Cup: Ico, Diego and Carlos, alias hipotermia, the last of whom is still fighting the jet lag. The competition is run by HackerOne between countries, with teams of up to 26 bug hunters, a group stage and knockout rounds to the final, like a football World Cup but breaking things instead. In this second edition, held in person in Argentina, Spain beat Israel and took the title.

We talk about how they got there, how hard it is to put a team together when there aren’t that many of us in Spain (they filled 25 of 26 slots) and the talent around here waiting for its chance. Next year many more people are expected to sign up, so many that there’s already talk of splitting the team in two. They, for now, refuse.