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The way companies handle security disclosures lately (i.e. laughing it off, or paying $6 reward), it seems like shaming them would work much better. Plus, this
by tomp 12y ago
The way companies handle security disclosures lately (i.e. laughing it off, or paying $6 reward), it seems like shaming them would work much better. Plus, this is truly a beginner-level failure, the kind you'd get insulted for by Linus.
- johannh 12y agoTrue, but it still feels like the right thing to do. I'd like people do be responsible when they discover a serious flaw in my programs, so I'll try to be responsible when discovering one in theirs. Also Linus basically insults anyone for being alive.
- smt88 12y agoWhy assume the worst about Slack just because some other companies have handled disclosures badly? Real people work at Slack, and very few of them were likely responsible for this oversight. OP could still pat him/herself on the back after disclosing and waiting for a fix.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ankey1 12y agoSlack has a Reporting Security Vulnerabilities page on its site: http://slack.com/whitehat http://slack.com/whitehat. Seems like something they would have taken seriously if it had been brought to them first.
- nailer 12y agoApparently it was, see: https://twitter.com/rootlabs/status/499723782244675584 https://twitter.com/rootlabs/status/499723782244675584
- richmarr 12y agoShaming Slack is one point. This guy just exposed the confidential information of who knows how many of Slack's customers. In my opinion that's douchery of epic proportions.
- anon1385 12y agoMaybe this kind of exposure is the only way we will teach people to stop trusting fly-by-night cloud startups with their confidential data?
- TeMPOraL 12y agoThis. That was exactly a kind of vulnerability that is meant to be publicly disclosed. Nothing of matter will happen to anyone because of that vulnerability, but people might remember it and next time they'll think twice about how they handle authentication.
- richmarr 12y agoSo hurting people in order to teach them a lesson about not getting hurt?
- anon1385 12y agoThis was about the most minor kind of information leak you could imagine. I doubt anybody is going to feel any real 'hurt' from this. In this case the information seems unlikely to contain anything sensitive pertaining to customers. If it had though then the companies that had negligently put sensitive information on untrusted servers would be held liable and could face significant fines (violating the Data Protection Act 1998 in the UK can lead to fines of up to £500,000 and similar legislation exists in other parts of the EU). That more serious kind of breach is the one we are trying to avoid by advising companies not to use cloud services.
- kordless 12y agoThe lesson can be had independently of the intent of douchery. Shit happens, and learning from your mistakes (by admitting them) is a fine way to get better at what you do.
- ayrx 12y agoCompletely untrue about the people at Slack. I disclosed a pretty trivial vulnerability to them and got a $100 reward. How about next time you stop generalising?
- tomp 12y agoI'm not generalizing, and I don't really care about Slack. I'm just putting forward a hypothesis about what might be going on in a security researcher's brain when they stumble upon a vulnerability.
- crazypyro 12y agoWell considering other people posted a tweet about someone trying to report it as a vuln on August 13th and getting told it's a feature, I'd say he's not exactly generalizing in this specific instance.
- tomjen3 12y agoPretty sure the going rate for a pen-tester is much, much higher than 100 usd an hour - and they would get paid even if they didn't find anything.