
She Convinced the Pentagon to Get Hacked: Katie Moussouris on Bug Bounties in the AI Era
For more than 20 years, organizations have argued about whether to let hackers into their systems. Katie Moussouris helped settle that argument. In Episode 17 of The Cybersecurity Podcast, host Jay Bavisi talks with Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security. She created Microsoft's first bug bounty program, convinced the Pentagon to launch Hack the Pentagon, and helped develop the ISO standards for vulnerability disclosure. Katie explains how she sold Microsoft on paying hackers. She also tells the inside story of how Hack the Pentagon launched with a total budget of about $150K. Then she looks at how AI is changing vulnerability research. It is flooding bug bounty programs with "AI slop" and duplicate reports, and it makes elite researchers even more effective. She also warns about government "buggy banks," makes the case for open-weight models as defensive tools, and says why organizations still need to hire interns even when AI can do their jobs.
- Transcript