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I found Prezi's source code

blog.shubh.am

181–190 of 266 posts

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because they tried" doesn't get a B. You're not graded on effort. What you're graded on - when it comes to defense as opposed to recovery, though both are a part of this - is how likely a breach is. Unfortunately, you don't always learn your grade (and when you do, it's bad). "Gambling with security will always be a losing bet in the long run. Rather just make it secure. Going off some strange 'expected resources' i…

No. But if the site gets hacked, I failed. If I asked users for their credits cards and stored it in a publicly accessible plain text file or in a secure system that still gets hacked the end result is still the same. My users are having unauthorized payments coming off their credit cards. I've failed. Maybe I can sleep better at night if I didn't go storing them in plain text and I can make up excuses easier, but I…

You're conflating two things, inappropriately in my opinion:

> If you offer a bug bounty to improve security, make sure you give a reward for any possible breach that could cause you to get hacked, regardless of whose 'fault' the vulnerability is.

This is true. There's no upside for rejecting this as "out of bounds" except for a relatively tiny sum of cash.

> If you know of a way to increase security, then you should increase it.

This I disagree with completely. If there's anything you can do with negligible cost you should do it, however there are all kinds of costs. There are usability costs, operational costs, training costs, etc, etc.

You can't hand-wave these away by declaring that any breach is failure without recognizing the fact that there is no such thing as perfect security. In fact all security is gambling, and it should be a gamble based on the best odds we can come up with professionally against the cost of failure. If something requires 100% perfect security then that thing should not be done, period.

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#182
post #10

It was out of scope. The rules are pretty clear: http://prezi.com/bugbounty/ and he broke at least two of them. And it seems like he knew it was out of scope when he submitted it too: "I had spent a total of 2 hours sifting and crawling through their services which were in scope , but wanted to see if I could locate any other subdomains..." Now I think Prezi should probably have paid him anyway because that's a prett…

"Now I think Prezi should probably have paid him anyway because that's a pretty boneheaded error and I'd be very grateful if someone politely pointed it out to me"

But Shubham did one additional thing, he unintentionally embarrassed a founder. That's the real reason he's not getting paid, everything else is a technicality...

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#183

Why even have a limited scope on bounty programs? (This is not the only time I've seen that.) Is it only to limit payout? Are their legal reasons? For example, their client tablet applications are ineligible. I just don't get the reasoning. In their position, I'd pay him the $500 and remove the idea of scope. I'm just curious if there's some counter-argument I'm not thinking about.

Often this is to keep from having to pay out for bugs you can't fix (the most common things to be out of scope are third party services). In this case the problem was actually on Prezi, but I imagine the rule was written to exclude bugs in their version control system from the bounty program.

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#184

Anyone else notice that "Adam "'s full name and contact info are not redacted in the screen print of the email?

I removed the last names from the blog posts and from the PDF, as they could be indexed by Google. I have now also removed them from the screenshots. Thanks. My intention was not to negatively affect these developers careers.

Commendable, though you probably need to redact the bitbucket link in the screenshot too as that has Adam 's full name as owner of the repo.

Where does it end?!

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he meant scan the source code for security issues and then report those bugs one by one ...

That is what I meant, I should have been more clear.

How is that dishonest? It sounds like a great way to improve security and get bounties.

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Just want to add that this shows a very large misconception in the corporate security world. Security is not something you can get a "B - good effort" for. Security is all encompassing. You either get an A+ and the hacker does not get in, or you get an F and your data is gone. There is no middle ground.' That's not true. There are substantially different levels of security required depending on the expected resource…

I disagree here - you've either lost the data or you haven't. You can make guesses as to the expected resources of the attacker, but if you're wrong and the attacker has more resources, then you might as well have not even bothered. As an example, you have some fairly non-sensitive private health records. Here are three approaches: (1) No security at all. You hope nobody is going to bother taking them and using them…

>>> You can make guesses as to the expected resources of the attacker, but if you're wrong and the attacker has more resources, then you might as well have not even bothered.

This statement is dead on.

From the Wired article about Max Butler: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-01/ff_max_bu...

"Butler spent months plotting to infiltrate and overtake his four competitors, culminating in the two-day hackfest in his overheated safe house high above the Tenderloin. The sites blinked out of existence, their thousands of forum posts later rematerializing on CardersMarket. Iceman now had upwards of 6,000 users on his site, making it by far the biggest carder site on the Internet."

Your security people work 8-5 and go home and leave their work at their office. Most hackers have the ability go days or weeks at a time banging away on your system until they find a crack wide enough to get in and then its game over.

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Just want to add that this shows a very large misconception in the corporate security world. Security is not something you can get a "B - good effort" for. Security is all encompassing. You either get an A+ and the hacker does not get in, or you get an F and your data is gone. There is no middle ground.' That's not true. There are substantially different levels of security required depending on the expected resource…

I disagree here - you've either lost the data or you haven't. You can make guesses as to the expected resources of the attacker, but if you're wrong and the attacker has more resources, then you might as well have not even bothered. As an example, you have some fairly non-sensitive private health records. Here are three approaches: (1) No security at all. You hope nobody is going to bother taking them and using them…

By your logic, there are only two kinds of chess (or any game) players: those who win every game they play, and those that don't.

Unfortunately, the real world isn't so black and white. The resources someone will put into hacking your site depends on their perceived value of success, and if someone with enough resources values it enough, they will hack your site, no matter what you do.

Anyone who claims to have constructed an unhackable internet service has either constructed a trivial and useless service, or doesn't understand the complexity of software.

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#188
post #10

It was out of scope. The rules are pretty clear: http://prezi.com/bugbounty/ and he broke at least two of them. And it seems like he knew it was out of scope when he submitted it too: "I had spent a total of 2 hours sifting and crawling through their services which were in scope , but wanted to see if I could locate any other subdomains..." Now I think Prezi should probably have paid him anyway because that's a prett…

"Now I think Prezi should probably have paid him anyway because that's a pretty boneheaded error and I'd be very grateful if someone politely pointed it out to me" But Shubham did one additional thing, he unintentionally embarrassed a founder. That's the real reason he's not getting paid, everything else is a technicality...

That sounds like pure conjecture.

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#189

What is the gain in setting up a "Can you hack us?" and then make some parts out of scope?! It's not like a black hat hacker would go "Oh well, this isn't their usual domain, so It's not fair" -.- The only thing this causes is exceptionally bad PR, or even worse for the company; someone just got access and you don't know. Access to source code is like the gold mine of finding an exploit, because you will know exactly…

> What is the gain in setting up a "Can you hack us?" and then make some parts out of scope?! It's not like a black hat hacker would go "Oh well, this isn't their usual domain, so It's not fair" -.- This suggests that anything less than perfect security is worthless. Which is better, having pentesters look for vulnerabilities in 50% of your surface area, or having pentesters look for vulnerabilities in 0% of your sur…

> This suggests that anything less than perfect security is worthless. Which is better, having pentesters look for vulnerabilities in 50% of your surface area, or having pentesters look for vulnerabilities in 0% of your surface area?

Is this supposed to be rhetorical?

Say you buy a really good front door for your house, and forget to put a back door on your house. I would say that testing the security of the front door is a waste of time.

Re: I found Prezi's source code

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Just want to add that this shows a very large misconception in the corporate security world. Security is not something you can get a "B - good effort" for. Security is all encompassing. You either get an A+ and the hacker does not get in, or you get an F and your data is gone. There is no middle ground.' That's not true. There are substantially different levels of security required depending on the expected resource…

I disagree here - you've either lost the data or you haven't. You can make guesses as to the expected resources of the attacker, but if you're wrong and the attacker has more resources, then you might as well have not even bothered. As an example, you have some fairly non-sensitive private health records. Here are three approaches: (1) No security at all. You hope nobody is going to bother taking them and using them…

How do you relate this to something like home security? You have valuables at your home. People can come in and take it with varying degrees of force. Are you prepared for the maximum force attack, or do you accept the typical security features which you know to be minimally effective?
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