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Dear "Security Researchers"
- abhisek 1y agolol. That should be “bug bounty hunters”.
- NicolaiS 1y agobeg bounty hunters
- worthless-trash 1y agoFor those who haven't been on the receiving side of a beg bounty, you'd get an email something like this (I make no claims to its correctness): To: abuse@yourdomain.com Subject: Bug bounty , PII data made available port 22. Please provide bug bounty for critical software flaw. Issue description This is critical, exploitation of the ftp server provides source code to a popular debian server allowing attacker to sidestep usual reverse engineering procedures required to attack a system. (Authentication Bypass). I will release this bug in thirty (30) days if no bug bounty has been granted and attackers will be able to take full advantage of this problem. Reproducibility This issue is trivial to reproduce, with popular hacking tools such as ftp and internet explorer. Bounty value Please be mindful and understand that this research takes up many hours and bugs like this can fetch up to $25,000 on popular bug bounty programs ( https://www.hackerone.com/ https://www.hackerone.com/ ).
- samlinnfer 1y agoI've received one for a "Critical vulnerability" with a chatgpt'd report where the UI/flow doesn't even exist in our application.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoThat sounds like the IT equivalent of those “I have video of you masturbating” emails (which, by the way, work -I once had a friend tearfully beg for my help, when he got one. It was difficult to convince him it was a scam).
- worthless-trash 1y agoI sometimes feel like these can end up being a DOS to those who have to read and investigate.
- saagarjha 1y ago[flagged]
- sph 1y agohttps://www.troyhunt.com/beg-bounties/ https://www.troyhunt.com/beg-bounties/
- 867-5309 1y agowhoosh
- JohnKemeny 1y agoRelated: "AI generated security reports about curl". 371 points on Jan 2, 2024, 121 comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38845878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38845878
- re 1y agoThe notice on ftp.bit.nl predates ChatGPT. Perhaps more relevant: "Beg Bounties" 280 points, Nov 8, 2021, 104 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29147555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29147555 > Want to be a bounty beggar? It's dead simple, you just use tools like Qualys' SSL Labs, dmarcian or Scott Helme's Security Headers, among others. Easy point and shoot magic and you don't need to have any idea whatsoever what you're doing!
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoAlternatively to bounty begging, one could use these tools to find vulnerabilities and then try to figure out why it is a vulnerability and how it might be practically exploited. Seems like a good way to learn real security research. (Don’t actually exploit it, though...)
- nottorp 1y ago"An attacker COULD if the stars align right EXPLOIT ..." I'm too tired of the current scareware industry to write more. The sad part is real security issues can get lost in the noise...
- broodbucket 1y agoThe issue is that understanding what is actually exploitable and what is actually a part of your threat model is difficult, it's a pretty high bar, a bar not met by most people that typically have decision making power around a product or service. It's a huge problem but it's not particularly easy to fix so it's pretty obvious why the industry has taken the route of deciding certifications and scans = security and that vulnerabilities only exist if they have a CVE assigned, and anything with a CVE assigned must be an actual problem.
- nottorp 1y agoI read it as "certifications and scams" :)
- davedx 1y agoFor sure. I've worked at orgs where we disabled package vulnerability scanners because they created a constant stream of upgrading busywork. So many "vulnerabilities" are things like "JavaScript prototype pollution in this package that does something in your build toolchain". So much noise and so very little signal, the incentives of these scanning and vuln tracking companies just aren't aligned well I don't think. Nowadays I tend to more rely on tech news to hear when there's an actual serious vuln I need to address. (Note I'm not advocating everyone do this. Do your own risk assessment).
- saagarjha 1y agoNote that tech news is biased towards flashy or relatable security issues. Nobody is going to n-day your phone (though you should, of course, keep it up to date). It's your Drupal you should worry about.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoI can only imagine the frustration of Debian maintainers. It's so hard to remain positive and welcoming after years of abuse
- TonyTrapp 1y agoJust to be clear, this isn't a note from the Debian maintainers, but from the company that runs a mirror for various projects.
- leftcenterright 1y agoBeg bounty hunters have damaged the field so much. But even in 2025, I have come across companies who do not at all care about rewarding good security researchers who report issues. Hell, I have even been ghosted after reporting the bug which they promptly fixed and did not even write back to say a "thank you". Has anyone else also encountered this behavior from tech companies? (not talking about a non profit, hospital or gov agency here)
- dcminter 1y agoWithout feedback you don't know that the bug was fixed in reaction to your bug report. It might have been - but unless they explicitly invited bug reports in return for something then it's at worst bad manners not to acknowledge in that case. Debatably poor self-interest on their part as well. As you note, the field has been damaged by bounty hunters. When the SNR drops low enough there's no point even reading the damn things and high-quality reports will be discarded along with the dross.
- leftcenterright 1y ago> Without feedback you don't know that the bug was fixed in reaction to your bug report. In this particular case, they did say they will consider a reward for a severe bug (it was severe, DNS hijack) and then once I shared details, the next day I checked, they had fixed it and never wrote back.
- cinntaile 1y agoNext time you find a bug there you sell it to the highest bidder. Or maybe not you, but someone will do that. It's not really a winning strategy... I did not know bug bounty had such a bad rep. Is this for reporting bugs outside of the bug bounty platforms?
- leftcenterright 1y ago> Is this for reporting bugs outside of the bug bounty platforms? Nah, in this case they simply had no official bug bounty program/platform. I would guess that a big factor is mindset and tech culture across different companies or having a bad head of something who doesn't get the point of bug bounty / promoting responsible disclosure.
- TonyTrapp 1y agoSee also this classic: "Source Code Disclosure of every possible project" on the Mozilla bugtracker: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=949446 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=949446
- pornel 1y agoThere's a harmless "vulnerability" that some automated scanners keep finding on my website. I've deliberately left it "unfixed", and block everyone who emails me about it.
- gnfargbl 1y agoDear System Owners, I'm sorry that the security industry is a cesspool. We all know it's a cesspool. We can't pump it out. However, please do not let the absolute state of things cause you to give up on security. Don't stop patching, don't go back to writing your passwords on post-it notes, don't just expose everything to the open internet and don't let an LLM perform your only code security review. Keep doing the boring, basic things, and you'll have the best chance at keeping the attackers out. Ultimately security is a chore, like showering or visiting the dentist. And there are always going to be people telling you that you absolutely must apply deodorant to your groin or that you can avoid the dentist by rinsing with apple cider vinegar. Ignore them, and just keep doing the basics as well as you can.
- deknos 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- xg15 1y agoOK, but what would be the risk here?
- dogleash 1y ago> However, please do not let the absolute state of things cause you to give up on security. I'm the security guy on our team and I'm pretty much over it. Once you get a project's security up to baseline status quo, then the security community only produces tiny scraps of actionable input for improving something they're vocally unhappy with. How did specialized QA from people who like breaking security controls for fun turn into acting like the business owner for security requirements? And also somehow getting away with a level of haranguing that we wouldn't accept from our actual stakeholders?
- K0balt 1y agoYour front door is accessible to the public. Without a fence around your yard and a guard at the gate, bad actors could get access to your front door and exploit any number of door vulnerabilities, including a chainsaw or battering ram. Please send me $12,000 dollars.
- sim7c00 1y agoi am sorry this was already disclosed by our internal security team. thanks for your report but you will not be eligible for the bounty payout.
- sph 1y agoThis is exactly what happens whenever you publish a website online, with so called "ethical hackers" finding minor vulnerabilities, hoping to get paid for running a script. See also https://www.troyhunt.com/beg-bounties/ https://www.troyhunt.com/beg-bounties/
- shawabawa3 1y agoMy favourite one that i've seen 4 of 5 iterations of, is people claiming about a privilege escalation or authentication bypass bug, then their reproduction is a convoluted way of doing: 1. Log in with admin credentials 2. Copy the session cookie 3. Run curl command using above session cookie 4. You have bypassed authentication!!
- mikrotikker 1y agoTbf session tracking of browser fingerprinting can stop session hijacking
- grishka 1y agoYour end-to-end encryption is compromised because I can read the messages directly from your app's local database in plaintext on a rooted device.
- klabb3 1y agoDon't trust this person, it’s a scam. A real security consultant would have mentioned defense in depth and offered you a discount on their WAF offering.
- a3w 1y ago404 for both of https://ftp.bit.nl/.well-known/security.txt https://ftp.bit.nl/.well-known/security.txt https://ftp.bit.nl/security.txt https://ftp.bit.nl/security.txt Wrong place, did not read. Here go the ``security researchers'' begging/threatening for money.
- proactivesvcs 1y agoAnd they wouldn't think to: ~ $ whois -h whois.abuse.net ftp.bit.nl abuse@bit.nl (for bit.nl)
- blueflow 1y agoWhere do domain owners specify that address so that this service can answer these queries?
- proactivesvcs 1y agohttps://abuse.net/addnew.phtml https://abuse.net/addnew.phtml
- blueflow 1y agoIf you wanna get an abuse address, resolve to the IP and query RIPE for the abuse mail. Every RIPE member needs to specify an abuse address and what they specify is the source of truth for their AS. No need to query a crowdsourced hearsay service. I did not know of this service until now, so any correct result it has for any of my domains is a matter of coincidence.
- proactivesvcs 1y agoI've used it for decades and don't recall a time whereby a hit has not been accurate, whereas abuse contacts listed on RIPE and all of the other registries are hit and miss, if they exist. In addition anyone who has listed their domains there probably knows what they're doing, and won't demand a CAPTCHA, an essay or an account to report abuse.
- yieldcrv 1y agodear sir or madam, please do the needful and transfer the sum
- piecelyJohn 1y agoI’m convinced that the cybersecurity and security research industry is largely a pass-the-blame market. And honestly, that's not a bad thing — it's smart and even necessary. If a publicly traded company suffers a security breach, they can say, "We hired [security firm] to harden our systems — if something went wrong, it’s on them." This way, the company deflects blame, protects its reputation, and keeps shareholders satisfied. All-in-all not a bad strat
- dustingetz 1y agoTSA theatre, america fuck yeah
- gnfargbl 1y agoThe side effect of this process is that if [security firm] is doing their job then the systems do actually get hardened and the number of breaches is reduced as a result. In other words, this machine works as intended. A common challenge is assessing whether [security firm] did actually do their job, or whether there just weren't any tigers around here in the first place. Hence, SOC2.
- UncleMeat 1y agoIts unfortunately even worse than that, in my opinion. Security is making computers not do things. Software engineers spend much of their day trying to make computers do new things. It is almost necessary that security work adds friction to other work. So not only is it often difficult to measure the actual impact of a security mitigation, it is often possible (or even easy) to measure the friction caused by a security mitigation. You really need everybody to believe in the necessity of a mitigation or else it becomes incredibly easy to cut.
- ozim 1y agoNot really because one of the key aspects of security is Availability in CIA triad.
- LunaSea 1y agoComing from the distribution that didn't generate SSH keys correctly for two years (insane security impact), that's a bit rich. Source: https://jblevins.org/log/ssh-vulnkey https://jblevins.org/log/ssh-vulnkey
- 18172828286177 1y agoThis is a mirror, not the upstream
- panki27 1y agoThe site does not appear to be from the Debian project, it's likely just a mirror.
- codyvoda 1y agothis is also from 2008 lol
- dist-epoch 1y ago> There is NO SENSITIVE INFORMATION on this server. So if hypothetically I would find a .csv file with emails, names, dates of births and addresses on this website, I should not send an email because it can't possibly be a data leak.
- BoppreH 1y agoIf you want to be pedantic, the TLS certificate private key is very much sensitive and guaranteed to exist somewhere accessible from that server.
- praptak 1y agoDear sysadmin for YCOMBINATOR, Critical vulnerability on port 80: an attacker could exfiltrate all comments posted therein. Please provide a bug bounty for this critical vulnerability.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoTo add, I was able to publish messages with malicious content and it displayed without filters. This is very damaging to children. The proof of concept malicious content: cross the road on red. Please think of the children!
- lifestyleguru 1y agoThank you Debian, you are awesome and I love you ♥ (no homo).
- lionkor 1y agoit's a mirror
- apexalpha 1y ago"HIGH ALERT. YOUR STATIC WEBSITE WITHOUT ANY INPUT HAS IS MISSING A CERTAIN CSP HEADER. ALERT" Please send me €10.000 for this disclosure.
- mtmail 1y agoSame happens to us regularly. Server called 'downloads', in a directory 'public' whose homepage has the text 'this is a public server with files for very everybody to download'. There's even a file 'all-files-are-open-and-public-not-company-secrets.txt' in the directory.
- junon 1y agoReminds me of working on Chalk (JavaScript terminal coloring library). My first foray into "beg bounties" was with Chalk. We received a report that inputs that contained malicious terminal escape sequences would be emitted to the terminal if passed through chalk. But... yeah, of course they would. It's just a glorified string formatter, we don't care what you pass to us. They would have been emitted anyway if you just used console.log. There was literally nothing actionable for us to do. It wasn't our responsibility. It wasn't just left there. The "researcher" persisted, threatening to file a CVE (which wreaks havoc on an OSS dependency such as Chalk that has millions of downloads a day) and kept swinging their proverbial member around with how they work for soandso esteemed research company (it wasn't) and ultimately demanded we compensate for their time, citing it as a responsibility and obligation. I would have ignored it, but the threat of CVE (and the fact we'd have literally zero recourse against it) kept me on the hook. Ever since then it's really watered down my view of the CVE/CVSS systems and has turned me a bit bitter toward "security researchers" in general, which isn't where I'd like to be. With the rise of automatic ReDos detection the problem has only compounded over the last 4-5 years - things that might even technically fall under the "vulnerability" umbrella, but only if the code is so intentionally and egregiously misused, and in a manner that is dangerous with any library let alone ours, still earning a plea for monetary compensation. It's silly, saddening and only discourages people to work on OSS stuff at a scale larger than hobbies, to be honest. (Thank you for coming to my TED talk) EDIT: I should mention that I have received legitimate reports by well-meaning researchers (no quotes) that are detailed and professional in nature I'm always proud to service them and see them through. They're increasingly rare, though. The downside is that doing OSS for free means I still cannot compensate for their time, even though I would love to.
- devttyUSB0 1y agoHi. System Owner here. Funny to see this pop up on ycombinator and thanks for pointing out a security.txt was missing. Fair point. I've added it with a clearer note not to report "open directory", specifically. Never forget to have a wonderful day, everyone.
- mad0 1y ago"p0rn" dir in root level is a nice touch for this.
- fusslo 1y agohttps://ftp.bit.nl/ https://ftp.bit.nl/ I'm at work and a little afraid of clicking on the 'pr0n' folder :)
- croemer 1y agoThose are joke pictures, try this one: https://ftp.bit.nl/pr0n/pussy-fisting.jpg https://ftp.bit.nl/pr0n/pussy-fisting.jpg
- ri0t 1y agoGot you covered. All sfw, just the filenames are a bit offensive, if you speak dutch. It's like that "two naked tits/boobies" (the birds) joke and others.
- bitbasher 1y agoHere's one I got today trying to scare me. Hi Team, We are following up regarding the critical vulnerabilities we had previously reported — we are still awaiting your acknowledgment and decision on appropriate compensation. Clear communication is vital in responsible vulnerability disclosure programs, and it’s important for both sides to remain engaged to ensure vulnerabilities are properly handled and rewarded fairly.We have also discovered additional high-risk issues that could impact your user security and overall platform integrity. However, we are waiting for closure on the earlier reports before moving forward with new disclosures.Please let us know the status update at your earliest convenience so we can proceed accordingly.Thank you for your attention to this matter.