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Invitations

Hackers: Learn how invitations work on the HackerOne platform

Updated over 5 months ago

In order to hack on private programs, you must receive invitations to them. You can receive invitations if you meet the following criteria:

  • Established reputation

  • Non-negative signal

  • Clear record with zero code of conduct violations

When your Reputation, Signal, and Impact are high enough, you'll join the pool of hackers that receive access to private programs. Once you start receiving invitations to those programs, remember, the one universal rule is to not talk about the private programs you're a part of.

HackerOne manages invitations for programs by:

  • Daily checking to see if the program has met their report volume target in the last 30 days

  • Inviting hackers for the program if they're not reaching their report volume target

How Invitations Work

The number of invitations HackerOne sends is based on the program's report volume on a rolling 30-day basis. These are the use cases as to how HackerOne sends invitations:

Case

Action

The program is far from meeting their report volume.

HackerOne will gradually increase the number of invitations so the program can meet their report volume.

The program is receiving more reports while still being under their report volume.

HackerOne will send out fewer invitations.

The program's report volume is met.

Invitations will pause until the volume drops below the target in the 30-day window.

The program's report volume is set to 0.

No invitations will be sent.

Sometimes programs will manually invite you to hack on their programs. Keep in mind that it's a violation of the Disclosure Guidelines for you to reach out to a private program to request an invitation.

Invitation Expirations

Invitations to hack a program expire in 1 week. You may want to reject an invitation for one reason or another. The sooner you let HackerOne know that you're not going to accept the invitation, the sooner the invite can be sent to another hacker.

Invitation Preferences

Some hackers may want to get invites from any private program, while others only want invites from those offering bounties, and some may not want any invitations at all.

To choose when to receive invitations to private programs, you can navigate to Settings > Invitation Preferences.

You can choose from these options:

Field

Detail

I want to receive invitations to private programs

Select yes to receive invitations from private programs.

Pause private program invitations

Select yes to stop receiving invitations from private programs.

Pause private program invitations until

Enter the date you want to stop receiving invitations until.

Cryptocurrency preferences

Select yes to opt out of receiving cryptocurrency program invitations.

This field is currently in beta

Bounty preferences

Select yes to only receive invitations to programs that award a bounty.

(Currently in beta) Move the slider to indicate the minimum bounty amount for critical severity bugs for programs you’d like to receive invitations from.

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