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The business model already exists: order videogame consoles or luxury purses or some other high-value good that is easily fungible with cash (Craigslist) and th

by paulmd 7y ago

The business model already exists: order videogame consoles or luxury purses or some other high-value good that is easily fungible with cash (Craigslist) and then either porch pirate the package when it arrives, or if you're brazen enough just order it right to yourself. This is something that is routinely done already with credit card fraud. This is how thieves "cash out" the cards they steal with skimmers at gas pumps and stores. The angle here is that they no longer need to steal your digits with a skimmer, they can just use your contactless payment wallet, because Paypal didn't lock them down properly. Or so the researchers allege (they don't give the exact details of the vuln for obvious reasons).

tptacek 7y ago
That's like saying the existing business model is "crime". What I'm talking about is all the support code and processes that go into operationalizing a vulnerability. Again: it depends on what the vulnerability is, and we don't know, but if it's an elaborate serverside vulnerability that requires user interaction specific to this vulnerability, I'm comfortable out on the limb that says nobody is bidding against anyone to buy this on any black market. You're also only responding to a fraction of my argument. Even for clientside RCE, alternate market buyers don't pay full freight in a lump sum: they tranche payments because they know vendors will eventually kill the vulnerability and nobody is sure how long that will take. Here, you have a vulnerability where you'd more or less have to get paid royalties from direct fraud, because, again, Paypal can presumably kill the bug instantly. If you have more specific details on the vulnerability that will enable you to make a clearer case for how this could drop into a system of repeated profitable attacks, provide them. I'm interested in hearing them. Otherwise, my default response to people saying "this bounty is too cheap because the black market would pay 10x for it" is "yeah, sure, and for logout CSRFs too".

by paulmd 7y ago

tptacek 7y ago

That's like saying the existing business model is "crime". What I'm talking about is all the support code and processes that go into operationalizing a vulnerability. Again: it depends on what the vulnerability is, and we don't know, but if it's an elaborate serverside vulnerability that requires user interaction specific to this vulnerability, I'm comfortable out on the limb that says nobody is bidding against anyone to buy this on any black market. You're also only responding to a fraction of my argument. Even for clientside RCE, alternate market buyers don't pay full freight in a lump sum: they tranche payments because they know vendors will eventually kill the vulnerability and nobody is sure how long that will take. Here, you have a vulnerability where you'd more or less have to get paid royalties from direct fraud, because, again, Paypal can presumably kill the bug instantly. If you have more specific details on the vulnerability that will enable you to make a clearer case for how this could drop into a system of repeated profitable attacks, provide them. I'm interested in hearing them. Otherwise, my default response to people saying "this bounty is too cheap because the black market would pay 10x for it" is "yeah, sure, and for logout CSRFs too".