"White" hackers received 1 million miles of bonuses from the airline for the found vulnerability. Tax officers require $ 7620 from hackers

In the world of information technology, quite unexpected things happen. For example, the payment of virtual bonuses to information security specialists, helping resource / service owners to eliminate vulnerabilities, can turn into complaints from the tax service. So, a team of certified hackers from Offensi.com received 1 million bonus miles from United Airlines for notification of a vulnerability that is dangerous for the company.

But as it turned out, these virtual bonuses are taxed. The United States Revenue Service estimates miles as taxable income. The amount of income is calculated simply - the tax authorities count 2 cents for 1 mile. A million miles is 2 million cents, that is $ 20,000. In New York State, such income is taxed at $ 7,620 (28% federal tax + 3.65% local + 6.45% state tax = 38.1%). In other words, having received virtual miles as a bonus, the recipient will have to pay more than $ 7,000 of real money in taxes. But there is another option - you can donate your bonus miles to charity. This is exactly what some bonus miles recipients have to do.

The problem here is that bonuses to “white” hackers are given by many companies, including Facebook, Google, Amazon and others. But these companies pay with real money. The tax percentage is then deducted from them, and the hacker replenishes his bank account. And what to do with miles? You cannot sell them; you can only use them to buy tickets or order various services on the same airline that issued the bonus. But you have to pay real money as a tax for virtual miles. Not everyone is ready to go for it.

Last year, recipients of bonuses were surprised by calculations of the percentage of contributions to the tax service.



This year the team of “white” hackers, who also received a bonus, chose to immediately refuseFrom him. The airline immediately warned that the bonus miles are taken into account by the tax authorities, so experts from Offenci in a return letter asked to transfer them a million miles to charity. What was done.

The airline thus fulfilled its promise, charitable foundations received assistance. But are those who helped the company eliminate the dangerous vulnerability, but did not get anything? One can only guess.