re: United Offers 1 Million Miles to Hackers to Find Flaws in Network

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Finding a vulnerability and even writing an exploit for it are not illegal and what United wants. Vulnerability disclosure happens all the time and is encourage by big companies usually with cash payouts (miles in this case). You only break the law when you actively exploit the vulnerability without the permission of the company.

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I think this needs some clarification.

United asking for white hat hackers to attempt to hack their network is one thing, but in general if someone attempts to hack a network without authorization it's criminal. In fact most networks will throw up a message on their routers saying something along the lines of "This is a private network, any attempts to access this network without authorization is prohibited."

People can't just try to hack into private networks at their whim. Even if their intention isn't criminal.