The race is on to discover and exploit mobile phone OS vulnerabilities for practical and research goals.

Hacker-powered pentest and bug bounty platform HackerOne, has today announced a partnership with mobile phone manufacturer OPPO to improve the security of the latter company’s products and services and engaging the world’s security research community. 

In 2018, OPPO had established the OPPO Security Response Center (OSRC) to enhance cybersecurity for its customers and partners. With over 320 million monthly active users of ColorOS, its customized version of Android OS, OSRC has worked with the security research community and safely resolved various security weaknesses. The response center’s goal remains to promote cooperation and communication with ethical hackers and to identify security vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by cybercriminals. Therefore, the partnership with HackerOne is envisioned to aid in OPPO’s support of the global security research community and their vital role in reducing cyber risk.

Said Peng Xing, OSRC’s Operation Manager: “HackerOne works with the world’s largest community of security researchers to help companies around the world reduce cyber risk. We are excited to partner with them to strengthen the protection for our customers and provide a beneficial environment for security researchers.”

The partnership includes the launch of a private, invite-only bug bounty program hosted on HackerOne. The private program invites a select group of trusted security researchers to hunt down security vulnerabilities in exchange for a reward. In future, a bug bounty program may be released for public participation.

OPPO joins HackerOne’s more than 1,750 customer programs, including The US Department of Defense, General Motors, Google, PayPal, Hyatt, Twitter, Nintendo, Microsoft, MINDEF Singapore, Qualcomm, Starbucks, and Dropbox.

Said Attley Ng, HackerOne Vice President, Asia-Pacific: “Cyber incidents have increased in volume, complexity and impact at internet speeds, and organizations like OPPO are seeing the benefits of hacker-powered security to safeguard their most critical digital assets. We are thrilled to partner with a leader like OPPO to help protect their users while creating more opportunities for the research community.”