10 ms·

It's not clear if the author was hired to do this pentest or is a guerilla/good samaritan. If it is indeed the latter, I wonder how they are so brazen about it.

by cedws 3y ago

It's not clear if the author was hired to do this pentest or is a guerilla/good samaritan. If it is indeed the latter, I wonder how they are so brazen about it. Does chattr.ai have a responsible disclosure policy? In my eyes people should be free to pentest whatever as long as there is no intent to cause harm and any findings are reported. Sadly, many companies will freak out and get the law involved, even if you are a good samaritan.

devwastaken 3y ago
Lack of proper regulations, engineering standards, and tangible fines means that the only democracy that exists is the people themselves taking action. The corps being hacked have plenty of malicious intent, perhaps focus on that.
- jimz 3y ago
  In the American case, the interpretation of the CFAA under Van Buren (2021) would provide at least the defense that one does not violate the law if there is no meaningful authorization scheme in place to determine what constitutes "exceeds authorized access". This may sound pedantic but when reporting on the decision much of the non-specialist media seemed to have failed to appreciate that in order to determine what conduct exceeds authorized access, it's necessary to be able to determine where authorized access starts and ends in every case as a factual matter, and the courts essentially threw out the theory that one can simply use a non-technological solution (like a very broad ToS) as a backstop and require some sort of notice and specificity. I don't think the mere fact that such a technological scheme can be erected is relevant since in theory you can put in some sort of basic authorization scheme - including basic HTTP authorization - around pretty much anything accessible via the protocol, but anything beyond a showing of actually putting such an authorization scheme in place, there's no real way to determine the unimplemented intent of some company in a way with any certainty. It's Orin Kerr's "gate-up-gate-down" theory - you need to have a gate in place to start with, instead of just a space where a gate can go or the assumption where a gate should be to figure out whether the gate is up or down, and without that determination one cannot meet all of the elements required to prove a violation of the statute. I wouldn't even consider this "hacking" really. If prosecuted a defense attorney familiar with both the technology and the admitted niche area of computer crime law can readily conduct some very effective cross-examination against whoever the state is bringing out as a witness. The government does frequently rely on the lack of tech-competent and accessible counsel as a way to exert coercion (and usually resulting in a plea), and it doesn't help that the layperson has a very difficult time figuring out what qualities constitute competency when looking for attorneys (hence the enduring popularity of jingles since being memorable is frequently mistaken for being competent), but they are out there.
KomoD 3y ago
> It's not clear if the author was hired to do this pentest or is a guerilla/good samaritan Pretty clear to me, "it was searching for exposed Firebase credentials on any of the hundreds of recent AI startups.", running a script to scan hundreds of startups > Sadly, many companies will freak out and get the law involved, even if you are a good samaritan. Yeah, but that also ends with that company being shamed a lot of the time
- bitexploder 3y ago
  The issue is it is often impossible to distinguish from a white hat or a black hat hacking your live systems. It can trigger expensive incident response and be disruptive to the business. Ethically, I think it crosses a line when you are wasting resources like this, live hacking systems. There is usually a pretty clear and obvious point where you can stop, not trigger IR, and notify the companies. Not saying that was the case here, but I have been doing cybersecurity assessment work for 17+ years. Even when you have permission sometimes the juice isn't worth the squeeze to keep going as you often have proven the thing you needed to or found the critical defect. There is a balance to whtie hat activities and using good sense to not waste resources.
  - troupe 3y ago
    The potential downside of stopping once you find a critical defect is that the company may not take it seriously unless you go just a bit further and show what you can do with the defect. In this case, showing that it gives you access to the admin dashboard.
    - bitexploder 3y ago
      Generally, hacking into a live system without permission is strictly illegal. Once you have discovered some surface level vulnerability you are legally obligated to stop, at a minimum. You can't just keep hacking and exploiting things that cross a certain, generally clear threshold, without permission. Intent definitely matters, but you can still end up in jail if a prosecutor has a hair up their ass and decides they have a good case against you. I do agree, some of the time you need fireworks to get the right people's attention. You could argue there is some moral imperative there, but ethically you are in the wrong if you keep going. Just have to decide of the moral imperative outweighs clearly breaking the law in situations where you don't have permission.
MrBruh 3y ago
> Good Samaritan The web is insecure enough as it is, I just want to do my part to make it that little bit safer :)
- mise_en_place 3y ago
  Either way it is a fascinating write-up. It will hopefully be a cautionary tale for other businesses and companies out there, and will inspire them to lockdown this credentialing issue. I've noticed a similar blasé attitude when implementing SSO; the devil is in the details as they say.
- cedws 3y ago
  I salute you for it. Take caution though. The bad guys don't play by the rules so the rules only hinder the good guys from helping. I think Internet security would be in a better position if we had legislation to protect good samaritan pentesters. Even moreso if they were appropriately rewarded.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    How do you propose such a law would work?
    - cedws 3y ago
      1. White hat submits a "Notice of Vulnerability Testing" document to target company (copy also sent to government body) including their information, what systems will be tested, and in what time window 2. Company is required to acknowledge the notice within X hours and grant permission or respond with a reason that the test cannot take place 3. White hat performs testing according to the plan 4. White hat discloses any findings to the company (keeping government body in the loop) 5. Company patches systems and may reward white hat at their discretion 6. Government body determines if fines should be applied and may also reward white hat at their discretion Something like that. The white hat would have legal immunity as long as they submit the document, stick to the plan, and don't cause damage.
ericalexander0 3y ago
Sometimes these events provoke regulators to take a closer look at the company. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/ftc-takes-action-against-global-tellink-corp-failing-adequately-secure-data-notify-consumers-after https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/...
jjeaff 3y ago
Do you feel the same about physical security? It's fine for people to walk around your building, peak in the windows, maybe pick the lock on the door, maybe even take a little walk inside, as long as they don't steal anything?
- z3phyr 3y ago
  Communes exist. The internet is supposed to be a giant commune of researchers watching each others backs.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  If I owned a bunch of vending machines, and someone came to me and said "Hey, I found out that if you put a credit card in the dollar bill slot, it gives out free soda and empties all its coins through the return slot," I would a.) be pleased to have been informed and b.) not be upset that they did this. If a neighbor came to me and said, "Hey, your mailbox that's located at the end of your long dirt driveway is protected by a wafer lock that can be opened by simply slapping the side of the mailbox in a funny way," I would maybe wonder why they were slapping my mailbox but I would be grateful that they told me and I would want them to continue doing whatever weird shit they were doing (so long as it wasn't causing damage). When you put property in a public (or practically public) space, there's an expectation that it will not be treated as though it is on private property. There's a big difference between someone jiggling the door to your home (where you physically reside) and jiggling the lock on a mall gumball machine or the handle on a commercial fire exit.
- DirkH 3y ago
  There's a huge fucking difference between "yo, the neighbourhood and country is unsafe and there is no strongly upheld norm here of people not seeing if they can enter someone else's house if their door is easily unlockable. You must be new here since I noticed your door is pretty insecure, I recommend you do x,y and z if you are to live here safely. Take care." Versus "yo, I just entered your home and snooped around since it was easy to lockpick. There are actually strong norms here of people not doing this so I know this is quite the social violation and something like this had a very low probability of happening otherwise but, you know, your door is weak so it was my right to enter. You should fix it btw" The internet is like the former not the latter and taking a moral high ground stance that it just should be otherwise is just screaming underwater while doing nothing to actually protect yourself from an actual real threat. I'd be very thankful if I moved to some place I'm unfamiliar with where people lockpicking is just a cultural norm and someone warned me I should get a better door.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by cedws 3y ago

devwastaken 3y ago

Lack of proper regulations, engineering standards, and tangible fines means that the only democracy that exists is the people themselves taking action. The corps being hacked have plenty of malicious intent, perhaps focus on that.

jimz 3y ago
In the American case, the interpretation of the CFAA under Van Buren (2021) would provide at least the defense that one does not violate the law if there is no meaningful authorization scheme in place to determine what constitutes "exceeds authorized access". This may sound pedantic but when reporting on the decision much of the non-specialist media seemed to have failed to appreciate that in order to determine what conduct exceeds authorized access, it's necessary to be able to determine where authorized access starts and ends in every case as a factual matter, and the courts essentially threw out the theory that one can simply use a non-technological solution (like a very broad ToS) as a backstop and require some sort of notice and specificity. I don't think the mere fact that such a technological scheme can be erected is relevant since in theory you can put in some sort of basic authorization scheme - including basic HTTP authorization - around pretty much anything accessible via the protocol, but anything beyond a showing of actually putting such an authorization scheme in place, there's no real way to determine the unimplemented intent of some company in a way with any certainty. It's Orin Kerr's "gate-up-gate-down" theory - you need to have a gate in place to start with, instead of just a space where a gate can go or the assumption where a gate should be to figure out whether the gate is up or down, and without that determination one cannot meet all of the elements required to prove a violation of the statute. I wouldn't even consider this "hacking" really. If prosecuted a defense attorney familiar with both the technology and the admitted niche area of computer crime law can readily conduct some very effective cross-examination against whoever the state is bringing out as a witness. The government does frequently rely on the lack of tech-competent and accessible counsel as a way to exert coercion (and usually resulting in a plea), and it doesn't help that the layperson has a very difficult time figuring out what qualities constitute competency when looking for attorneys (hence the enduring popularity of jingles since being memorable is frequently mistaken for being competent), but they are out there.

KomoD 3y ago

> It's not clear if the author was hired to do this pentest or is a guerilla/good samaritan Pretty clear to me, "it was searching for exposed Firebase credentials on any of the hundreds of recent AI startups.", running a script to scan hundreds of startups > Sadly, many companies will freak out and get the law involved, even if you are a good samaritan. Yeah, but that also ends with that company being shamed a lot of the time

bitexploder 3y ago
The issue is it is often impossible to distinguish from a white hat or a black hat hacking your live systems. It can trigger expensive incident response and be disruptive to the business. Ethically, I think it crosses a line when you are wasting resources like this, live hacking systems. There is usually a pretty clear and obvious point where you can stop, not trigger IR, and notify the companies. Not saying that was the case here, but I have been doing cybersecurity assessment work for 17+ years. Even when you have permission sometimes the juice isn't worth the squeeze to keep going as you often have proven the thing you needed to or found the critical defect. There is a balance to whtie hat activities and using good sense to not waste resources.
- troupe 3y ago
  The potential downside of stopping once you find a critical defect is that the company may not take it seriously unless you go just a bit further and show what you can do with the defect. In this case, showing that it gives you access to the admin dashboard.
  - bitexploder 3y ago
    Generally, hacking into a live system without permission is strictly illegal. Once you have discovered some surface level vulnerability you are legally obligated to stop, at a minimum. You can't just keep hacking and exploiting things that cross a certain, generally clear threshold, without permission. Intent definitely matters, but you can still end up in jail if a prosecutor has a hair up their ass and decides they have a good case against you. I do agree, some of the time you need fireworks to get the right people's attention. You could argue there is some moral imperative there, but ethically you are in the wrong if you keep going. Just have to decide of the moral imperative outweighs clearly breaking the law in situations where you don't have permission.

MrBruh 3y ago

> Good Samaritan The web is insecure enough as it is, I just want to do my part to make it that little bit safer :)

mise_en_place 3y ago
Either way it is a fascinating write-up. It will hopefully be a cautionary tale for other businesses and companies out there, and will inspire them to lockdown this credentialing issue. I've noticed a similar blasé attitude when implementing SSO; the devil is in the details as they say.
cedws 3y ago
I salute you for it. Take caution though. The bad guys don't play by the rules so the rules only hinder the good guys from helping. I think Internet security would be in a better position if we had legislation to protect good samaritan pentesters. Even moreso if they were appropriately rewarded.
- freejazz 3y ago
  How do you propose such a law would work?
  - cedws 3y ago
    1. White hat submits a "Notice of Vulnerability Testing" document to target company (copy also sent to government body) including their information, what systems will be tested, and in what time window 2. Company is required to acknowledge the notice within X hours and grant permission or respond with a reason that the test cannot take place 3. White hat performs testing according to the plan 4. White hat discloses any findings to the company (keeping government body in the loop) 5. Company patches systems and may reward white hat at their discretion 6. Government body determines if fines should be applied and may also reward white hat at their discretion Something like that. The white hat would have legal immunity as long as they submit the document, stick to the plan, and don't cause damage.

ericalexander0 3y ago

Sometimes these events provoke regulators to take a closer look at the company. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/ftc-takes-action-against-global-tellink-corp-failing-adequately-secure-data-notify-consumers-after https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/...

jjeaff 3y ago

Do you feel the same about physical security? It's fine for people to walk around your building, peak in the windows, maybe pick the lock on the door, maybe even take a little walk inside, as long as they don't steal anything?

z3phyr 3y ago
Communes exist. The internet is supposed to be a giant commune of researchers watching each others backs.
bastawhiz 3y ago
If I owned a bunch of vending machines, and someone came to me and said "Hey, I found out that if you put a credit card in the dollar bill slot, it gives out free soda and empties all its coins through the return slot," I would a.) be pleased to have been informed and b.) not be upset that they did this. If a neighbor came to me and said, "Hey, your mailbox that's located at the end of your long dirt driveway is protected by a wafer lock that can be opened by simply slapping the side of the mailbox in a funny way," I would maybe wonder why they were slapping my mailbox but I would be grateful that they told me and I would want them to continue doing whatever weird shit they were doing (so long as it wasn't causing damage). When you put property in a public (or practically public) space, there's an expectation that it will not be treated as though it is on private property. There's a big difference between someone jiggling the door to your home (where you physically reside) and jiggling the lock on a mall gumball machine or the handle on a commercial fire exit.
DirkH 3y ago
There's a huge fucking difference between "yo, the neighbourhood and country is unsafe and there is no strongly upheld norm here of people not seeing if they can enter someone else's house if their door is easily unlockable. You must be new here since I noticed your door is pretty insecure, I recommend you do x,y and z if you are to live here safely. Take care." Versus "yo, I just entered your home and snooped around since it was easy to lockpick. There are actually strong norms here of people not doing this so I know this is quite the social violation and something like this had a very low probability of happening otherwise but, you know, your door is weak so it was my right to enter. You should fix it btw" The internet is like the former not the latter and taking a moral high ground stance that it just should be otherwise is just screaming underwater while doing nothing to actually protect yourself from an actual real threat. I'd be very thankful if I moved to some place I'm unfamiliar with where people lockpicking is just a cultural norm and someone warned me I should get a better door.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]