6 ms·

It makes me happy to see people who find and report bugs rather than hiding and exploiting them. I'm sure the monetary incentive doesn't hurt, either.

• pgrote 10y ago
  Agreed. Still, I don't understand why more people don't sell the exploits to the highest bidder. It seems counter intuitive to me. Maybe there are more people who sell the exploits and you just don't hear about it as much as people who submit them to the corporations before publicizing them.
  • charlesdm 10y ago
    He's 10. Who is he going to sell this to? $10,000 is probably a gigantic amount of money to him.
    • wnevets 10y ago
      its a lot money to most people.
      • charlesdm 10y ago
        Of course, but it might be worth $100-200k if sold to a third party. Edit: looks like I was wrong!
        • tptacek 10y ago
          No, it would be worth much less than $10,000 to anyone else. There is a specific kind of bug that is worth 6 figures on the black market: clientside remote code execution. Somehow, HN has gotten the impression that the going rate for the hardest bugs in the world to reliably weaponize is actually the going rate for all bugs everywhere.
          • mwcampbell 10y ago
            So you're saying client-side remote code execution bugs are the hardest to reliably weaponize? Do I understand correctly? I figured those bugs would be the easiest to weaponize.
            • tptacek 10y ago
              We mean different things, and it's me being imprecise. Substitute "generate" for "weaponize".
  • k-mcgrady 10y ago
    >> "Still, I don't understand why more people don't sell the exploits to the highest bidder. It seems counter intuitive to me." The same reasons people don't steal from shops or commit other crimes: 1. Morals 2. Risk of getting caught and subsequent punishment
    • tptacek 10y ago
      3. Nobody wants to buy Facebook bugs besides Facebook.
      • hueving 10y ago
        Yes, this particular class of bug isn't all that useful. If someone started using the exploit it wouldn't be long before a user complained that their comments were being deleted and then Facebook would figure it out in a hurry.
        • jsprogrammer 10y ago
          Presumably an Instagram rival could find it useful. If Instagram comments are gone/disappearing, then a more secure version could gain user-share from Instagram. Edit: Even CNBC is aware of data hacking[0]. Scary to know that people here don't even consider sabotage as a threat-model... [0] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/09/the-next-big-threat-in-hacking--data-sabotage.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/09/the-next-big-threat-in-hackin...
          • curiousgal 10y ago
            haha you can't be serious right? I am sorry but I honestly found that amusing. Like Instagram engineers scratching their heads as to why comments are disappearing while there's an up-rise of users and then someone finally decides to create a secure alternative and is upheld as the savior. Realistically though if this an were to become big enough to promote an alternative then Instagram would be all over it and thus fix it within minutes.
          • tptacek 10y ago
  • tptacek 10y ago
    I know, right? $10,000! Facebook is worth billions! Think what the black market might pay for a bug that would delete any Instagram comment!
    • jsprogrammer 10y ago
      A bug that allows unauthorized children to delete content from other user's accounts may point to other vulnerabilities, which could have even more value. IIRC FB/Instagram didn't payout on a report that took their entire AWS keys though...
      • tptacek 10y ago
        There are no Facebook vulnerabilities that have a value any higher than what Facebook is going to pay for them. If Facebook was sending t-shirts instead of writing 4-5 figure checks, these discussions would be more interesting. But that's not what Facebook does. Put it this way: before Facebook started these bounty programs, what do you think the price sheet for Facebook bugs on the "black market" looked like?
        • Buge 10y ago
          Well the NSA tapped into Google's internal datacenter traffic to steal user information. So some vulnerabilities like that might be useful to them. https://cms-images.idgesg.net/images/article/2014/06/googlessl-100310469-orig.jpg https://cms-images.idgesg.net/images/article/2014/06/googles...
          • tptacek 10y ago
            I'm having trouble connecting your first sentence to your second. It sounds a little like saying "so, the US army has M109 Howitzers, so maybe they'd be interested in this 3D-printed zip gun I just made."
            • Buge 10y ago
              I'm not talking about the vulnerability that this kid found. I'm talking about vulnerabilities that would allow access deep into the Facebook infrastructure. I think there are in fact some vulnerabilities the NSA would be willing to pay more than $10k for if it would allow them long term access to a lot of sensitive Facebook data.
  • saalweachter 10y ago
    What's the marketplace like? On the seller side, how easy is it to actually get paid? There's no point in trying to sell exploits if you're just going to get cheated, get busted selling to some sort of undercover law enforcement, or just go to a lot of trouble for not a lot of payoff. From a buyer perspective, you need to have a way to verify an exploit, or else you're just buying a pig in a poke. And you need a way to monetize the exploit, or some other motivation. And you really have no way to know how long your exploit will remain functional. (Or, you know, people could be basically good.)
    • jsprogrammer 10y ago
      Is there really information that you can obtain on your own that you can be criminally prosecuted for sharing? On what basis could law enforcement act undercover to trap sellers?
      • 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
        GP is not talking about just sharing. This is selling information for monetary gain. The buyer of which is also attempting to profit from it.
      • tptacek 10y ago
        Easy. All the sting operation has to do is make it clear to the seller what the "buyer" "intends" to do with the bug. It doesn't even have to be overt: they could simply say "we are looking to pay $10,000 for a bug that would enable us to download all the private photographs from Justin Bieber's Facebook account".
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
      • noxToken 10y ago
        It depends on the information. This only applies to the US, as the laws are probably difference elsewhere. The CFAA[1] is a very vague and broad law that aims to stop people from accessing systems, sending malicious data, etc. It is intentionally written in such a way to be forgiving to the victim since security is hard by default [citation needed]. So even if you found an exploit without using it yourself, you'll probably be charged with aiding and abetting or something similar. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
  • tn13 10y ago
    People do. There is an entire underground markets for exploits, hacked user databases/emails, Amazon AWS keys etc.
  • phasmantistes 10y ago
    If you had this exploit, how would you have monetized it? Do you know who to talk to? Do you know where to go on the darkweb to find the people who know the people who have the money to actually pay you for this? Do you know how to negotiate with them to actually guarantee payment? Do you know how much an exploit which can only delete content -- not generate false content, or access ACL'd content -- is actually worth? Long story short, companies offer guaranteed set-size rewards as a counterpoint to the black market's potential highly variant payouts.
    • tptacek 10y ago
      Companies like Facebook offer rewards as an incentive to get people to report bugs to them rather than to blog posts. The next highest bidder anywhere in the world for bugs like these is ε.
  • rwallace 10y ago
    Don't underestimate the value of money that's guaranteed instead of a hypothetical possibility, now instead of maybe sometime, yours free and clear instead of legally dodgy, that you can boast to friends and future potential employers about instead of hiding as a shameful secret.
    • beardog 10y ago
      I agree, except I'm pretty sure Facebook and other bug bounty programs don't guarantee payment.
      • eric_h 10y ago
        True, but they usually do by the time they say that you will be paid. I think the argument that a black market sale of an exploit won't necessarily be as clear cut is still valid.
  • betenoire 10y ago
    A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.
  • billyhoffman 10y ago
    Don't underestimate the professional value of disclosing a vulnerability to the company And I don't solely Mean the value of the publicity and the exposure of being public about the disclosure. The security community is surprisingly small. Getting a one off splash story in a rag like Business Insider is nothing compared to building a back and forth with Someone like Alex Stamos.
  • eli 10y ago
    If I find a wallet on the ground, I try to return it to the owner even if there's no reward and even if I'm not legally obligated to do so. I'd want someone who finds my wallet to do the same.
• rajangdavis 10y ago
  Off topic, but I once found a Magento SQL database backup from going to a robots.txt page for a company that I will not name. I told them how I was able to get to this file and laid out the other vulnerabilities with their site set up. I had access to all of their customer emails, all of their admin logins, encrypted passwords, and salts. Was able to find git credentials and a whole swathe of information that shouldn't be available... They fixed the issue pretty fast, but what bugs me is that I didn't get a thank you. I wasn't looking to gain anything, but I figure telling someone that their site is exposed warrants some gratitude.
  • asimuvPR 10y ago
    That's why I: - Stopped reporting anything that is not an issue in the source code of an open source project. I do so in their mailing lists or issue tracker. - Began to treat random internet bug reports with kindness and gratitude.
    • ashitlerferad 10y ago
      Thanks for being excellent!
  • dogma1138 10y ago
    I reported an xss in HP's pronq fortify login screen without getting as much as a thank you. Fortify on pronq is their SAAS application security scanner for those who were wondering.
• morganvachon 10y ago
  That, and it's great that Facebook offers an incentive to bug hunting, rather than treating the researchers like criminals, as some companies are known to do. I don't care for a lot of what Facebook does and how they do it, but this in particular is awesome of them.
• userbinator 10y ago
  I don't think it's that simple of a decision, or one that could be generalised to all cases. What if you found an exploit that let you break a widespread form of DRM, access normally paywalled information, or gain control of a device that you rightfully own but the manufacturer locked down against you? It really depends on your moral/philosophical stance, but all the money in the world wouldn't make me report any of those. That's why the idea of someone so young already thinking of becoming a "security researcher" bugs (no pun intended) me, because they all seem to inevitably end up proponents of "security that oppresses" in some form or another. Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic
  • ashitlerferad 10y ago
    A recent manifesto around that: http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ "Leaking documents, expropriating money from banks, and working to secure the computers of ordinary people is ethical hacking. However, most people that call themselves "ethical hackers" just work to secure those who pay their high consulting fees, who are often those most deserving to be hacked."