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"Kim Dotcom is so confident in the security system at Mega, the newly launched file storage service, that the New Zealand-based German is offering a bounty of \u20AC10,000 (approx. US$13,580) to the first person who breaks it.\r\n\r\nLast week,\u00A0Dotcom said that he would offer up a prize for any enterprising hackers, after the site was criticized for the way that it handles security.\u00A0A\u00A0Mega blog post\u00A0dismissed points raised by\u00A0Ars Technica\u00A0and Forbes,\u00A0explaining that the site will soon be boosted by new measures, including\u00A0a change password feature\u00A0and more, to increase the security of accounts and data.\r\n\r\nMega, which launched less than two weeks ago, is\u00A0storing nearly 50 million files\u00A0and it passed\u00A01 million registered users\u00A0after just one day online.\r\n#Mega's open source encryption remains unbroken! We'll offer 10,000 EURO to anyone who can break it. Expect a blog post today.\r\n\r\n\u2014 Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) February 1, 2013\r\nThe bounty offer is part of Mega's ongoing focus on improvement while it is in beta -- &amp;quot;You find a bug. We fix it,&amp;quot; Dotcom said last week, and such financial carrots are dangled by most major tech firms, albeit in a less public fashion. Facebook, Google, Dropbox and countless others provide developers with cash payments and official acknowledgements if they find bugs and issues.\r\n\r\nThe service has come under pressure around the subject of file sharing this week.\u00A0Dotcom previously maintained\u00A0that the site would be &amp;quot;powered by legality and protected by the law&amp;quot;, and says 20 lawyers have pored over the service from a copyright violation stand-point, however critics have pointed out that 50 GB can be used to harbor a large amount of video content, which could be distributed via the service.\r\n\r\nYesterday, Dotcom claimed that just 0.001 percent of the files on Mega have been taken down for copyright issues, but it remains unclear how much visibility rights holders or anyone else has of the data, and how many requests are made. While there is evidence that counters his numbers.\r\n\r\nThe company blocked a third-party search engine from accessing publicly available files shared by Mega users.\u00A0Mega-Search.em\u00A0was the first site to turn Mega into a download site for the public, but the company acted within 24 hours and the cut-off effectively renders the search service useless.\r\n\r\nHowever, Torrent Freak found\u00A0that Mega was over-zealously policing content. Legal videos that the blog posted to the service via Mega-Search were immediately taken down as copyright infringing, suggesting Mega is either preventing uploads from third-party clients or aggressively monitoring content uploads. This set-up has reportedly seen thousands of items of content taken down this week, and that contradicts Dotcom's claim that typically just 50 Mega-hosted files are removed per day.\r\n\r\nWe'll have more details on the bounty when it is available.\r\n\r\nHeadline image via\u00A0Alexandr Shevchenko\u00A0/ Shutterstock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/01/kim-dotcom-puts-up-13500-bounty-for-first-person-to-break-megas-security-system/>