Microsoft will pay you up to $15,000 to bait AI-powered Bing

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Microsoft cordially invites you to have a crack at tipping its new AI-powered Bing search tools into existential meltdown. And it will pay you up to $15,000 for your trouble. Well, it will if you manage to bait AI Bing in just the right way.

Yup, AI Bing has joined Microsoft's bug bounty program (via Bleeping Computer). Strictly speaking, the bounty program is aimed at security pros, the idea being they find various flaws and security issues with Microsoft products and services, report them to Microsoft and receive an award. To get the full $15k you have to submit a detailed report that meets a very long list of submission requirements.

You'll need to identify the type of vulnerability and the affected environment including a BuildLabEx string, produce a vulnerability reproduction report, a proof of concept and more. More specifically, Microsoft is looking for vulnerabilities that meet the following definitions:

  • Influencing and changing Bing’s chat behavior across user boundaries, i.e. change the AI in ways that impact all other users.
  • Modifying Bing’s chat behavior by adjusting client and/or server visible configuration, such as setting debug flags, changing feature flags, etc.
  • Breaking Bing’s cross-conversation memory protections and history deletion.
  • Revealing Bing’s internal workings and prompts, decision making processes and confidential information.
  • Bypassing Bing’s chat mode session limits and/or restrictions/rules. 

So, yeah, this involves rather more than baiting Bing with confusing questions until it has an existential meltdown or starts gaslighting you about what the date is. Still, the new program covers pretty much every AI-powered Bing service:

  • AI-powered Bing experiences on bing.com in Browser (All major vendors are supported, including Bing Chat, Bing Chat for Enterprise, and Bing Image Creator)
  • AI-powered Bing integration in Microsoft Edge (Windows), including Bing Chat for Enterprise
  • AI-powered Bing integration in the Microsoft Start Application (iOS and Android) 
  • AI-powered Bing integration in the Skype Mobile Application (iOS and Android) 

So, you at least have plenty of attack vectors to go at. Moreover, in the year to June, Microsoft says it paid out over $13 million in bug bounty rewards including one individual payout of $200,000. So somebody is ticking all of Microsoft's security boxes. Bonne chance!

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Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.