In the past decade, hacking gradually became a respectable and potentially rewarding career thanks to the introduction of bug bounties.
While some organizations like Mozilla launched bug bounties all the way back in 2004, major impetus to the industry came when Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) rolled out similar programs in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Soon after, in 2011 and 2012, platforms like Bugcrowd and HackerOne commercialized bug bounties to make it easier for other companies to set them up.