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Nice. Although I'm still on the fence about bug bounties at their current price, as I can't help but see this as potentially manipulative, like hackathons where

by tetrep 10y ago

Nice. Although I'm still on the fence about bug bounties at their current price, as I can't help but see this as potentially manipulative, like hackathons where a company owns what you make, this guided hacking seems to be taking advantage of people's passions in order to underpay them for work. But, I can't really say it's underpaid, as I have no idea what the black market for exploits is like, so maybe they are fairly paid.

eugeneionesco 10y ago
>where a company owns what you make To be fair, Facebook owns those vulnerabilities since they wrote the code :) >in order to underpay them for work. You already know the bounties you would receive, if you think they are not fair, just don't look for vulnerabilities.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  > Facebook owns those vulnerabilities since they wrote the code :) However, vulnerabilities are worthless. It's the exploit that has value, and you wrote the code for that.
dsacco 10y ago
>> But, I can't really say it's underpaid, as I have no idea what the black market for exploits is like, so maybe they are fairly paid. There is no black market for isolated vulnerabilities in a single website. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11249173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11249173
- ryanlol 10y ago
  That's not exactly true. Plenty of profit to be made from hijacking facebook accounts, traffic, etc.
  - dsacco 10y ago
    I find this difficult to believe. The demand for a vulnerability is directly proportional to its half-life. Facebook accounts are not like desktop computers that can be harvested for a botnet. I could see a e.g. XSS worm being useful for spreading an advertisement from status to status, but there are two issues with that hypothesis: 1) Facebook is centralized, so the flaw would have maybe 24 - 48 hours of utility and 2) it's not even necessary to use a vulnerability to spread bullshit on Facebook newsfeeds, so why pay for it? The alternative claim is that someone would pay a lot of money for a security vulnerability compromising a high value account belonging to a celebrity, journalist, politician, etc. I still find this difficult to believe, because there doesn't appear to be a historical precedent for it. Most such attacks focus on brute-forcing a password or other authentication mechanism.
    - ryanlol 10y ago
      >I could see a e.g. XSS worm being useful for spreading an advertisement from status to status, but there are two issues with that hypothesis: 1) Facebook is centralized, so the flaw would have maybe 24 - 48 hours of utility and 2) it's not even necessary to use a vulnerability to spread bullshit on Facebook newsfeeds, so why pay for it? Someone paid 100k to put an exploit pack on redtube for a couple of hours, I'm sure they'd pay much more for a XSS worm allowing them to do the same on facebook. The average value per install in western countries with cryptolockers and FakeAV is really high. >The alternative claim is that someone would pay a lot of money for a security vulnerability compromising a high value account belonging to a celebrity, journalist, politician, etc. I still find this difficult to believe, because there doesn't appear to be a historical precedent for it. Most such attacks focus on brute-forcing a password or other authentication mechanism. I don't know, I used to regularly get requests from entertainment industry businesses asking me to compromise competitors facebook accounts for obscene amounts of money. Same goes for jealous ex boyfriends, even though the sums offered by them only tended to be a couple of grand. While certainly true for a plenty of other sites, the claim that there's no market for FB bugs simply has zero basis in reality.
      - dsacco 10y ago
        You're actually in the industry, as I am, so I'm willing to suspend more disbelief to verify what you're saying. You probably wouldn't be willing to show evidence of these claims here on HN, but would you be willing to do so privately? That might actually be sufficient to change my stance on Facebook vulnerability value.

by tetrep 10y ago

eugeneionesco 10y ago

>where a company owns what you make To be fair, Facebook owns those vulnerabilities since they wrote the code :) >in order to underpay them for work. You already know the bounties you would receive, if you think they are not fair, just don't look for vulnerabilities.

madeofpalk 10y ago
> Facebook owns those vulnerabilities since they wrote the code :) However, vulnerabilities are worthless. It's the exploit that has value, and you wrote the code for that.

dsacco 10y ago

>> But, I can't really say it's underpaid, as I have no idea what the black market for exploits is like, so maybe they are fairly paid. There is no black market for isolated vulnerabilities in a single website. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11249173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11249173

ryanlol 10y ago
That's not exactly true. Plenty of profit to be made from hijacking facebook accounts, traffic, etc.
- dsacco 10y ago
  I find this difficult to believe. The demand for a vulnerability is directly proportional to its half-life. Facebook accounts are not like desktop computers that can be harvested for a botnet. I could see a e.g. XSS worm being useful for spreading an advertisement from status to status, but there are two issues with that hypothesis: 1) Facebook is centralized, so the flaw would have maybe 24 - 48 hours of utility and 2) it's not even necessary to use a vulnerability to spread bullshit on Facebook newsfeeds, so why pay for it? The alternative claim is that someone would pay a lot of money for a security vulnerability compromising a high value account belonging to a celebrity, journalist, politician, etc. I still find this difficult to believe, because there doesn't appear to be a historical precedent for it. Most such attacks focus on brute-forcing a password or other authentication mechanism.
  - ryanlol 10y ago
    >I could see a e.g. XSS worm being useful for spreading an advertisement from status to status, but there are two issues with that hypothesis: 1) Facebook is centralized, so the flaw would have maybe 24 - 48 hours of utility and 2) it's not even necessary to use a vulnerability to spread bullshit on Facebook newsfeeds, so why pay for it? Someone paid 100k to put an exploit pack on redtube for a couple of hours, I'm sure they'd pay much more for a XSS worm allowing them to do the same on facebook. The average value per install in western countries with cryptolockers and FakeAV is really high. >The alternative claim is that someone would pay a lot of money for a security vulnerability compromising a high value account belonging to a celebrity, journalist, politician, etc. I still find this difficult to believe, because there doesn't appear to be a historical precedent for it. Most such attacks focus on brute-forcing a password or other authentication mechanism. I don't know, I used to regularly get requests from entertainment industry businesses asking me to compromise competitors facebook accounts for obscene amounts of money. Same goes for jealous ex boyfriends, even though the sums offered by them only tended to be a couple of grand. While certainly true for a plenty of other sites, the claim that there's no market for FB bugs simply has zero basis in reality.
    - dsacco 10y ago
      You're actually in the industry, as I am, so I'm willing to suspend more disbelief to verify what you're saying. You probably wouldn't be willing to show evidence of these claims here on HN, but would you be willing to do so privately? That might actually be sufficient to change my stance on Facebook vulnerability value.