When privacy is your product, scrutiny is part of the build: Inside our Bug Bounty Program

Most people see “bug bounty” and think contest. But for us, it’s a feedback channel from independent security researchers. When someone finds a behavior in an ExpressVPN app that looks risky, they tell us through our public program on YesWeHack.

ExpressVPN’s Offensive Security Manager, Brian Schirmacher, explains what happens next and why it matters for anyone who uses a VPN.

How ExpressVPN handles a bug report

When a report arrives, we recreate it in a controlled test environment. We confirm the version, the platform, and the steps. If it reproduces, we assess impact: what can an attacker actually do, under what conditions, and from where. That assessment decides what happens next: who owns the fix, how quickly it needs to ship, and how we verify it before release. If it doesn’t reproduce, we explain why and keep the door open for more detail. We’re not doing this to “catch out” researchers. The point is to learn quickly and make a good call.

All of this happens without touching real user data. We use test accounts and synthetic information; we don’t need your traffic to test whether a safeguard holds. That separation is the difference between curiosity and risk.

Inside the collaboration

Most of what happens after a bug report arrives is quiet, procedural work. A researcher might have spent hours digging through a network trace to prove that a setting behaves differently than expected. Our job is to confirm what they saw and decide whether it matters.

The first step is always replication. We rebuild the same conditions (i.e., the same app version, same OS, same sequence of clicks or commands) and watch. If the behavior repeats, the next step is to understand its impact. Security issues move into the security engineering workflow. Findings that influence reliability or predictable behavior are handled by the appropriate engineering teams, while usability or interface bugs are generally routed through customer support or QA. The aim is to guide each report to the people who can assess the risk accurately and ship improvements quickly.

Triage is as much about isolating the root cause, understanding the conditions required to reproduce it, and then finding the code to fix as it is about translating the researcher’s language into the engineer’s, and vice versa. A good report is like a clear lab note: it shows us the setup, the hypothesis, and the outcome. When that communication is precise, the whole loop tightens. What could have been a week of back-and-forth becomes a patch the next day.

Our environments are isolated and filled with synthetic information, but we approach every reproduction as if it could affect real users. That mindset guides how we evaluate impact and how we verify that safeguards hold in practice.

Collaboration with outside researchers works best when both sides understand that rhythm: curiosity, evidence, confirmation, fix. The exchange is professional, sometimes blunt, and often fast. It’s a form of peer review that keeps the product honest.

What our users gain from continuous testing

Bug bounty programs rarely make headlines, but they shape how reliable software feels day to day. Every credible report helps refine the way ExpressVPN’s systems behave under stress and contributes to a deeper understanding of how real conditions shape the product.

Every product sits on top of a wide base of internal testing, audits, and engineering review. Bug bounty adds a different lens. Independent researchers approach the product in ways that are difficult to script, and when they uncover something, it strengthens both the fix and the way we test for similar patterns in the future.

Over time, these reports build a detailed record of what has been tested, how issues move through review, and how quickly improvements reach users. It creates a form of continuous oversight that keeps the product accountable.

Our role is to connect companies with researchers who test responsibly,” says Selim Jaafar, Head of Customer Success Management at YesWeHack. “Programs like ExpressVPN’s work well because they treat researchers as partners. That cooperation keeps both sides engaged and focused on results. In addition, ExpressVPN’s program is comprehensive in scope, consistent in its rewards and rules, and expertly managed—ensuring stronger protection for the organization and lasting trust for its users.

Inside ExpressVPN, that relationship is part of how the team measures quality. Each report tells us something about how our systems operate in the real world. It helps us understand how complex behaviors interact and where our assumptions need reinforcing.

This loop of independent testing and rapid learning is what keeps a privacy service resilient. Users may never see the individual reports or the multiple small corrections that follow, but they experience the result: a service that is continually examined, improved, and verified by experts who know how to look for weak points before they matter.

Security researchers interested in contributing can visit ExpressVPN’s public program on YesWeHack, which offers bounties of up to 100,000 USD for eligible findings.

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