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Deleting any Facebook album

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Re: Deleting any Facebook album

#11
Good work. I see a lot of people are surprised at the amount received for this report. Yes, that is typical of both Facebook and Google (and to a lesser extent, Yahoo will pay large sums for particularly bad bugs). They are extremely generous - Facebook recently paid $5000 for a bug report that existed in their careers portal despite that infrastructure being entirely third party.

If anyone wants to try and replicate this sort of thing, consider this: the mobile applications (touch.facebook.com, iOS/Android apps) that Facebook use very often take advantage of legacy api calls and code that the main web application has long since disposed of.

A well known researcher, Stephen Sclafani ('ssclafani) receiced a bounty of $25,000 for arbitrary account takeover using the legacy api.

Legacy code is generally the first place to look for vulnerabilities. Legacy apis which are still allowed to exist for backwards compatibility are prime areas to search for bug bounties.

Good luck.

Re: Deleting any Facebook album

#12
post #11

Good work. I see a lot of people are surprised at the amount received for this report. Yes, that is typical of both Facebook and Google (and to a lesser extent, Yahoo will pay large sums for particularly bad bugs). They are extremely generous - Facebook recently paid $5000 for a bug report that existed in their careers portal despite that infrastructure being entirely third party. If anyone wants to try and replicate…

Another good place is at edges of systems, particularly where they rub each other in fraught ways. What's the rule that says that computer systems invariably take on the architecture of the organizations that make them? You can predict Terrible Code Exists Here by getting a list of team names from the target (trivial -- use LinkedIn or ask anyone who works there) and then figuring out where those teams have shipped half-assed worked-on-my-machine glue code to tie their systems together.

A common example: any handoff between a marketing site (or email) and a SaaS app more complicated than "Clicking this unchanging link takes you to a login form" almost certainly involves two teams and was somebody's perceived least important thing to do that day.

Re: Deleting any Facebook album

#13

Holy heck, $12.5K? That's one heck of a nice bug bounty program Facebook has there. That is likely more than the black market would pay for this, or at least a lot less hassle (plus the black market might have little interest as this cannot be used for hijackings, just trolling/harrassment).

It's not very useful to compare bug bounty payouts to what the "black market" would pay for a vulnerability.

Let's look through the challenges of selling a vulnerability that allows for arbitrary account takeover (much more serious than this):

0. Find the vulnerability. Assume that no one will find it by the time you find a third party buyer.

1. Look for a buyer. If you're not well-connected, you might stumble into an FBI honeypot (a sting operation) because you don't know what you're doing. But let's assume you know what you're doing and you find a buyer.

2. You negotiate a price. You don't receive much more than Facebook would pay you (if they even give you that much) for a few reasons:

a. The vulnerability can only be used on Facebook, so it's not vendor agnostic (compare Heartbleed, Shellshock);

b. The vulnerability has an extremely small window of capitalization - it will be discovered within a week of use, maybe less. The Facebook incident response team is spectacular.

c. You need to figure out a sufficient monetization strategy for distributing malware or spam using profiles that are taken over using this vulnerability. You have a week of use, much less if you try to take over accounts too aggressively. Now you're going up against all of Facebook's other protections - once you have the account, spreading malware will either be algorithmically discovered by Facebook or reported by other users.

With an organized crime unit composed of professional hackers, this might pay off. Maybe. And that is for one of the most serious bugs you can find. You're better off just taking what Facebook (generously) gives you.

The classical fallacy people fall into is believing that a web application vulnerability is worth much, especially the variety most tech companies have to offer. It's certainly serious, yes, but it's only worth what a market will pay for it. It's worth a lot to Facebook for brand integrity. It's not worth a lot to hackers looking to make money.

The only web applications that might be worth real money would be banks or government institutions (or similar platforms). Real money is found in vulnerabilities on desktop clients, especially memory corruption vulnerabilities, or in ubiquitous software that affects servers. You want to be able to compromise a user for use in a botnet or distribute malware to steal their money or personal information. Alternatively, you want to be able to attack, say, 30% of the websites on the internet with a wide variety of options after you get in.

Examples include:

• Vulnerabilities in Flash.

• Vulnerabilities in Python, Ruby or corresponding web frameworks.

• Code execution in iOS that allows a jailbreak (most sources indicate the going price for this is $500,000). Other vulnerabilities as well, such as compromising app store receipts or in-app purchase checks.

• Vulnerabilities in Android, up to and including code execution.

• A game over flaw in any number of ubiquitous software packages used on Linux servers with root access.

• A sandbox escape in OS X or Windows (you'll be paid more for Windows but both are lucrative).

Re: Deleting any Facebook album

#14
post #12
post #11

Good work. I see a lot of people are surprised at the amount received for this report. Yes, that is typical of both Facebook and Google (and to a lesser extent, Yahoo will pay large sums for particularly bad bugs). They are extremely generous - Facebook recently paid $5000 for a bug report that existed in their careers portal despite that infrastructure being entirely third party. If anyone wants to try and replicate…

Another good place is at edges of systems, particularly where they rub each other in fraught ways. What's the rule that says that computer systems invariably take on the architecture of the organizations that make them? You can predict Terrible Code Exists Here by getting a list of team names from the target (trivial -- use LinkedIn or ask anyone who works there) and then figuring out where those teams have shipped h…

The "rule" that you're thinking of is Conway's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

Re: Deleting any Facebook album

#15

Holy heck, $12.5K? That's one heck of a nice bug bounty program Facebook has there. That is likely more than the black market would pay for this, or at least a lot less hassle (plus the black market might have little interest as this cannot be used for hijackings, just trolling/harrassment).

When 1 engineer costs ~$250k+ fully loaded, it isn't that much!

Plus they become good future recruiting targets.

Re: Deleting any Facebook album

#18

Holy heck, $12.5K? That's one heck of a nice bug bounty program Facebook has there. That is likely more than the black market would pay for this, or at least a lot less hassle (plus the black market might have little interest as this cannot be used for hijackings, just trolling/harrassment).

It's a great incentive to not sell it on the black market.

Re: Deleting any Facebook album

#19

Holy heck, $12.5K? That's one heck of a nice bug bounty program Facebook has there. That is likely more than the black market would pay for this, or at least a lot less hassle (plus the black market might have little interest as this cannot be used for hijackings, just trolling/harrassment).

I doubt the "black market" would pay much of anything for this bug, because, like most severe web vulnerabilities, it has no half-life.

Re: Deleting any Facebook album

#20
post #13

Holy heck, $12.5K? That's one heck of a nice bug bounty program Facebook has there. That is likely more than the black market would pay for this, or at least a lot less hassle (plus the black market might have little interest as this cannot be used for hijackings, just trolling/harrassment).

It's not very useful to compare bug bounty payouts to what the "black market" would pay for a vulnerability. Let's look through the challenges of selling a vulnerability that allows for arbitrary account takeover (much more serious than this): 0. Find the vulnerability. Assume that no one will find it by the time you find a third party buyer. 1. Look for a buyer. If you're not well-connected, you might stumble into a…

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