Intel appears to have suspended bug bounty program that paid up to $100,000 per flaw

Phoronix reported that Intel appears to have suspended its bounty program that once paid up to $100,000 per bug. Intel’s replacement for the Intigriti program offers no rewards, and no reason was given for the change. The Intigriti site states that it “is a responsible disclosure program without bounties,” confirming the report. A check of the site shows that the bounty board is still up but lists the program as suspended.

Intel’s site still lists details on the bug bounty program with awards that range “from $500 up to $100,000, based on quality of the report” and other factors. This program launched, invite-only, in 2017, and became open to all researchers in 2018, covering software, hardware, firmware, and open-source projects. Almost half of the CVEs Intel addressed in 2020, 105 out of 231, arrived through the bounty program, Intel said.

The old bounty board split vulnerabilities into four tiers, which were priced accordingly: Tier 1 from $2,000 to $100,000, Tier 2 $1,000 to $30,000, Tier 3 $500 to $10,000, and Tier 4 $250 to $5,000. Intel expanded the program’s scope to include web services between mid-2025 and October 2025, but it said in a January 6 update on Intigriti that it was evaluating “enhanced bounty and bonus criteria.” In about eight months, the bounties went from evaluation to suspension.

The outlet speculated that with the Linux kernel and other open-source projects being “bombarded” with security reports, it would not be surprising if AI bug-seeking played a role. Linux kernel CVEs have approached 2,000 per release, a fourfold increase from about 500, with maintainers “completely overwhelmed.” Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has said that duplicate AI reports on the kernel security list are “almost entirely unmanageable.” Curl, for one, closed its bounty program due to AI slop floods.

As a point of reference, HackerOne’s Internet Bug Bounty (IBB) program paused submissions effective March 27. “AI-assisted research is expanding vulnerability discovery across the ecosystem, increasing both coverage and speed,” HackerOne said on the program’s page. HackerOne is still paying queued submissions, with rewards from $68 to $2,257 based on severity. This supports the idea that AI has affected software programs, but it may not be as significant for hardware and firmware.

Intel’s next steps are worth watching to see if this suspension ends up permanent in a fast-changing landscape. Researchers are still able to submit vulnerabilities through the new program; it just offers no bounties for them. Checking AMD’s Intigriti page today shows that the program there is also suspended, although Intigriti does have an auto-suspend mechanism. This follows an earlier payment dispute over scope with a bounty hunter in June.

Even if AI tools carry a stigma and may be a factor in these recent events, they have proven handy. AI company OpenAI paid Hacktron researchers a $6,500 bounty for a discovered exploit chain using rival Anthropic’s model. Torvalds, who previously dismissed AI as mostly marketing, has also called AI “clearly a useful” tool, and acceptance in the field may grow.