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I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

dixken.de

111–120 of 466 posts

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#111

Maintaining Cybersecurity Insurance is a big deal in the US, I don't know about Europe. So vulnerability disclosure is problematic for data controllers because it threatens their insurance and premiums. Today much of enterprise security is attestation based and vulnerability disclosure potentially exposes companies to insurance fraud. If they stated that they maintained certain levels of security, and a disclosure de…

Heh, what insurance company you use should be public information, and bug finders should report to them.

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#112
post #86

This is extremely disappointing. The insurer in question has a very good reputation within the dive community for acting in good faith and for providing medical information free of charge to non-members. This sounds like a cultural mismatch with their lawyers. Which is ironic, since the lawyers in question probably thought of themselves as being risk-averse and doing everything possible to protect the organisation's…

I find often that conversations between lawyers and engineers are just two very different minded people talking past each other. I'm an engineer, and once I spent more time understanding lawyers, what they do, and how they do it, my ability to get them to do something increased tremendously. It's like programming in an extremely quirky programming language running on a very broken system that requires a ton of money to stay up.

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of understanding all of this, and when it does or does not apply, it's probably better to disclose vulnerabilities anonymously over Tor. It's not worth the hassle of being forced to hire a lawyer, just to be a white hat.

Part of the motivation of reporting is clout and reputation. That sounds harsh or critical but for some folks their reputation directly impacts their livelihood. Sure the data controller doesn't care, but if you want to get hired or invited to conferences then the clout matters.

You could use public-key encryption in your reports to reveal your identity to parties of your choosing.

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#115
> The security research community has been dealing with this pattern for decades: find a vulnerability, report it responsibly, get threatened with legal action. It's so common it has a name - the chilling effect.

Governments and companies talk a big game about how important cybersecurity is. I'd like to see some legislation to prevent companies and governments [1] behaving with unwarranted hostility to security researchers who are helping them.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46814614

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#116
AFAIK, what this dude did - running a script which tries every password and actually accessing personal data of other people – is illegal in Germany. The reasoning is, just because a door of a car which is not yours is open you have no right to sit inside and start the motor. Even if you just want to honk the horn to inform the guy that he has left the door open.

https://www.nilsbecker.de/rechtliche-grauzonen-fuer-ethische...

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#117

If this was in Costa Rica the appropiate way was to contact PRODHAB about the leak of personal information and Costa Rica CSIRT ( csirt@micitt.go.cr ). Here all databases with personal information must be registered there and data must be secure.

> If this was in Costa Rica the appropiate way was to contact PRODHAB about the leak of personal information and Costa Rica CSIRT ( csirt@micitt.go.cr ).

They did. It's in the article. Search for 'CSIRT'. It's one of the key points of the story.

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#118

There should exist a vulnerability disclosure intermediary. They can function as a barrier to protect the scientist/researcher/enthousiast and do everything by the book for the different countries.

MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) — https://msrc.microsoft.com/

They’ll close a report as “no action” if the issue isn’t related to Microsoft products. That said, in my experience they’ve been a reasonable intermediary for a few incidents I’ve reported involving government websites, especially where Microsoft software was part of the stack in some way.

For example, I’ve reported issues in multiple countries where national ID numbers are sequential. Private companies like insurers, pension funds, and banks use those IDs to look up records, but some of them didn’t verify that the JSON Web Token (JWT) used for the session actually belonged to the person whose national ID was being queried. In practice, that meant an attacker could enumerate IDs and access other citizens’ financial and personal data.

Reporting something like that directly to a government agency can be intimidating, so I reported it to Microsoft instead, since these organizations often use Azure AD B2C for customer authentication. The vulnerability itself wasn’t in Microsoft’s products, but MSRC’s reactive engineers still took ownership of triage and helped route it to the right contacts in those agencies through their existing partnerships.

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#119
post #4

> Instead, I offered to sign a modified declaration confirming data deletion. I had no interest in retaining anyone’s personal data, but I was not going to agree to silence about the disclosure process itself. Why sign anything at all? The company was obviously not interested in cooperation, but in domination.

Getting them to agree to your terms pretty much nullifies their domination strategy, and in fact becomes legally binding on them.

Re: I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer

#120
post #2

I’ve worked in I.T. For nearly 3 decades, and I’m still astounded by the disconnect between security best practices, often with serious legal muscle behind them, and the reality of how companies operate. I came across a pretty serious security concern at my company this week. The ramifications are alarming. My education, training and experience tells me one thing: identify, notify, fix. Then when I bring it to leader…

> By even flagging the issue and the potential fallout, I’ve put my career at risk. Simple as. Not your company? not your problem? Notify, move on.

Their websites says they're a freelance cloud architect.

The article doesn't say exactly, but if they used their company e-mail account to send the e-mail it's difficult to argue it wasn't related to their business.

They also put "I am offering" language in their e-mail which I'm sure triggered the lawyers into interpreting this a different way. Not a choice of words I would recommend using in a case like this.

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