Through Hack U.S., the Pentagon is offering cash rewards for exposures of digital weaknesses.

Forty-one defense contractors in the small-to-medium-size range participated in a vulnerability disclosure pilot that resulted in 1,015 reports, of which 401 were validated by system owners for remediation.

It's the ninth bug bounty challenge held at the DOD overall.

Lynch will be succeeded by Brett Goldstein, a Navy adviser whom acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan recruited to report directly to him.

It's the "most inclusive" bug bounty program to date, meaning that foreign nationals — except those from China, Russia, Iran or North Korea — are welcome to participate.

DOD tapped cybersecurity firms Synack, HackerOne and Bugcrowd to provide vetted hackers for continual assessments of defense websites, hardware and physical systems.