tldr: an attempt to reduce the _terror reporting_. **There is no longer a curl bug-bounty program.** It officially stops on January 31, 2026. After having had a few half-baked previous takes, in April 2019 we kicked off the first real curl bug-bounty with the help of Hackerone, and while it stumbled a bit at first it has been quite successful I think. We attracted skilled researchers who reported plenty of actual vulnerabilities for which we paid fine monetary rewards. We have certainly made curl better as a direct result of this: **87 confirmed vulnerabilities and over 100,000 USD** paid as rewards to researchers. I’m quite happy and proud of this accomplishment. I would like to especially highlight the awesome Internet Bug Bounty project, which has paid the bounties for us for many years. We could not have done this without them. Also of course Hackerone, who has graciously hosted us and been our partner through these years. Thanks! ## How we got here Looking back, I think we can say that the downfall of the bug-bounty program started slowly in the second half of 2024 but accelerated badly in 2025. We saw an explosion in AI slop reports combined with a lower quality even in the reports that were not obvious slop – presumably because they too were actually misled by AI but with that fact just hidden better. Maybe the first five years made it possible for researchers to find and report the low hanging fruit. Previous years we have had a rate of somewhere north of 15% of the submissions ending up confirmed vulnerabilities. Starting 2025, the confirmed-rate plummeted to below 5%. Not even one in twenty was _real_. The never-ending slop submissions take a serious mental toll to manage and sometimes also a long time to debunk. Time and energy that is completely wasted while also hampering our will to live. I have also started to get the feeling that a lot of the security reporters submit reports with a _bad faith attitude._ These “helpers” try too hard to twist whatever they find into something horribly bad and a critical vulnerability, but they rarely actively contribute to actually _improve_ curl. They can go to extreme efforts to argue and insist on their specific current finding, but not to write a fix or work with the team on improving curl long-term etc. I don’t think we need more of that. There are these three bad trends combined that makes us take this step: the mind-numbing AI slop, humans doing worse than ever and the apparent will to poke holes rather than to help. ## Actions In an attempt to do something about the sorry state of curl security reports, this is what we do: * We no longer offer any monetary rewards for security reports – no matter which severity. In an attempt to remove the incentives for submitting made up lies. * We stop using Hackerone as the recommended channel to report security problems. To make the change immediately obvious and because without a bug-bounty program we don’t need it. * We refer everyone to submit suspected curl security problems on GitHub using their _Private vulnerability reporting_ feature. * We continue to immediately _ban and publicly_ _ridicule_ everyone who submits AI slop to the project. ## Maintain curl security We believe that we can maintain and continue to evolve curl security in spite of this change. Maybe even improve thanks to this, as hopefully this step helps prevent more people pouring sand into the machine. Ideally we reduce the amount of wasted time and effort. I believe the best and our most valued security reporters still will tell us when they find security vulnerabilities. ## Instead If you suspect a security problem in curl going forward, we advise you to head over to GitHub and submit them there. Alternatively, you send an email with the full report to `security @ curl.se`. In both cases, the report is received and handled privately by the curl security team. But with _no monetary reward offered_. ## Leaving Hackerone Hackerone was good to us and they have graciously allowed us to run our program on their platform for free for many years. We thank them for that service. As we now drop the rewards, we feel it makes a clear cut and displays a clearer message to everyone involved by also moving away from Hackerone as a platform for vulnerability reporting. It makes the change more visible. ## Future disclosures It is probably going to be harder for us to publicly disclose every incoming security report in the same way we have done it on Hackerone for the last year. We need to work out something to make sure that we can keep doing it at least imperfectly, because I believe in the goodness of such transparency. ## We stay on GitHub Let me emphasize that this change does not impact our presence and mode of operation with the curl repository and its hosting on GitHub. We hear about projects having problems with low-quality AI slop submissions on GitHub as well, in the form of issues and pull-requests, but for curl we have not (yet) seen this – and frankly I don’t think switching to a GitHub alternative saves us from that. ## Other projects do better Compared to others, we seem to be affected by the sloppy security reports to a higher degree than the average Open Source project. With the help of Hackerone, we got numbers of how the curl bug-bounty has compared with other programs over the last year. It turns out curl’s program has seen more volume and noise than other public open source bug bounty programs in the same cohort. Over the past four quarters, curl’s inbound report volume has risen sharply, while other bounty-paying open source programs in the cohort, such as Ruby, Node, and Rails, have not seen a meaningful increase and have remained mostly flat or declined slightly. In the chart, the pink line represents curl’s report volume, and the gray line reflects the broader cohort. Inbound Report Volume on Hackerone: curl compared to OSS peers We suspect the idea of getting money for it is a big part of the explanation. It brings in real reports, but makes it too easy to be annoying with little to no penalty to the user. The reputation system and available program settings were not sufficient for us to prevent sand from getting into the machine. The exact reason why we suffer more of this abuse than others remains a subject for further speculation and research. ## If the volume keeps up There is a non-zero risk that our guesses are wrong and that the volume and security report frequency will keep up even after these changes go into effect. If that happens, we will deal with it then and take further appropriate steps. I prefer not to overdo things or _overplan_ already now for something that ideally does not happen. ## We won’t charge People keep suggesting that one way to deal with the report tsunami is to _charge_ security researchers a small amount of money for the privilege of submitting a vulnerability report to us. A _curl reporters security club_ with an entrance fee. I think that is a less good solution than just dropping the bounty. Some of the reasons include: * Charging people money in an International context is complicated and a maintenance burden. * Dealing with charge-backs, returns and other complaints and friction add work. * It would limit who could or would submit issues. Even some who actually find legitimate issues. Maybe we need to do this later anyway, but we stay away from it for now. ## Pull requests are less of a problem We have seen other projects and repositories see similar AI-induced problems for pull requests, but this has not been a problem for the curl project. I believe for PRs we have better much means to sort out the weed with automatic means, since we have tools, tests and scanners to verify such contributions. We don’t need to waste any human time on pull requests until the quality is good enough to get green check-marks from 200 CI jobs. ## Related I will do a talk at FOSDEM 2026 titled Open Source Security in spite of AI that of course will touch on this subject. ## Future We never say never. This is now and we might have reasons to reconsider and make a different decision in the future. If we do, we will let you know. These changes are applied now with the hope that they will have a positive effect for the project and its maintainers. If that turns out to not be the outcome, we will of course continue and apply further changes later. ## Media Since I created the pull request for updating the bug-bounty information for curl on January 14, almost two weeks before we merged it, various media picked up the news and published articles. Long before I posted this blog post. * The Register: Curl shutters bug bounty program to remove incentive for submitting AI slop * Elektroniktidningen: cURL removes bug bounties * Heise online: curl: Projekt beendet Bug-Bounty-Programm * Neowin: Beloved tool, cURL is shutting down its bug bounty over AI slop reports * Golem: Curl-Entwickler dreht dem “KI-Schrott” den Geldhahn zu * Linux Easy: cURL chiude il programma bug bounty: troppi report generati dall’AI * Bleeping Computer: Curl ending bug bounty program after flood of AI slop reports * The New Stack: Drowning in AI slop, cURL ends bug bounties * Ars Technica: Overrun with AI slop, cURL scraps bug bounties to ensure “intact mental health” * PressMind Labs: cURL ko?czy program bug bounty – czy to koniec jako?ci zg?osze?? * Socket: curl Shuts Down Bug Bounty Program After Flood of AI Slop Reports Also discussed (indirectly) on Hacker News.

The promise that the AI revolution will free workers with four-day weeks and more leisure time is a scam, and everyone knows it. You don’t need decades to see it, just look at how the very tech companies selling that fantasy treat their own staff. The same firms preaching a dreamy future of shorter weeks are already using AI hype to justify layoffs, pay cuts, and harsher working conditions. https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/mercor-meta-ai-labor

For too long, the internet has been shaped by platforms funded by venture capital and advertising. The Fediverse is testament to a different kind of social media: one built for its users, not corporate interests. This independence is what makes Mastodon and the wider Fediverse special, fostering a diverse and resilient network of communities. We are showing the world every day, that this model works! Independence comes with its own set of challenges. Running a server, moderating content, and developing the software that powers this network requires resources. We want to make it easier for those who value Mastodon to make donations directly, to “flip the script” from corporations funded by surveillance capitalism, to sustainable support built from many small donations. When the people who use the platform are its primary backers, the platform’s loyalty remains with them. Over the next few days, we will be taking a deliberate and measured step forwards, by making the donation feature more visible. We will be rolling out a campaign on the Mastodon servers that we operate (mastodon.social and mastodon.online). This will allow us to gather feedback and understand the process, so we can learn whether it feels right for our community. The initial campaign will appear via a banner to people that use our Android and iOS apps, if they are signed-in to an account on one of our instances, and only if their account has existed for four weeks or more. The banner will be easy to dismiss, of course, and we will not continually prompt users to donate. This will only show up in our mobile apps for now - in a future campaign, we hope to extend the feature to the web as well. The banner is separate from the existing Donate button that appears in the app settings for users on our instances. If this works well, we would like to make this fundraising option available to all other Mastodon instances. This would empower individual server administrators to receive direct support from their users. Each instance could then choose whether or not to enable this feature, giving them another tool to ensure their long-term viability. We expect this to have a number of detailed requirements, and it would take effort to build out as a broader feature; it is something we consider a medium to longer term concept, rather than an immediate next step. We know that collecting money can present complexities and questions. We’d like to figure out how to do this well, together with the community. This is not a corporate fundraising campaign: it’s an effort to secure the future of a more ethical and independent social web. It’s an invitation to help us build a platform that truly belongs to all of us. Thank you for your support as we take another small step forwards in our fundraising efforts. ### Thank you for supporting Mastodon We develop and maintain the free and open-source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this—we rely entirely on your support through platforms like Patreon. Donate on Patreon Donate directly View our sponsors

Over the last year or so I’ve seen a disturbing tendency in tech/startup/VC worlds to buy into the neoreactionary view that for startups to be successful they need to get on board the Trump train. Yes, there are the big name folks who everyone knows about and who didn’t really surprise anyone—Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, […]