When most people hear about hacking, they no doubt think about bad people doing bad things, such as disrupting services or stealing information. However, there are many hackers who tear apart code for the purpose of fixing potential weaknesses, and Nintendo has called out to those hackers for help.
Nintendo has partnered with HackerOne, an organization that partners with companies to reward hackers for helping improve their products and services, to help fix 3DS exploits. The last few years have had more than a few headlines of Nintendo heading to court to battle piracy and pulling titles from eShop that hackers were able to use as back doors into the handheld. Now, Nintendo is giving hackers an incentive to work with the company to fix these problems with payments that can range from $100 to $20,000. Nintendo is hoping to not just combat piracy, but also cheating and people using 3DS for inappropriate content.
Nintendo has always taken matters like this seriously, and this appears to be its next step in an ongoing battle that is unlikely to end anytime soon. It also should be noted that so far this reward is only for 3DS, so it will be interesting to see if this initiative expands to other current and future platforms.
Source: Siliconera