Protection from this kind of blame-shifting and misdirected retaliation should be guaranteed by law. Until it is, bugs in critical and important infrastructure will go on unreported, and remain available for malicious actors to exploit.
Protection from this kind of blame-shifting and misdirected retaliation should be guaranteed by law. Until it is, bugs in critical and important infrastructure will go on unreported, and remain available for malicious actors to exploit.
Would they also prosecute a person who told them one of their doors was left unlocked after-hours?
A normal person's reaction upon being told "You left your keys in the lock" is usually gratitude, not calling the cops.
EDIT: Is it suspicion? "Hmm...this person found an unlocked door, which means they were clearly trying all the doors. Don't like that. Who knows what else they found but didn't report." Which is understandable, but clearly counter-productive. If the person was a malicious actor, they obviously wouldn't go to the trouble of reporting in the first place.
Then again there is this culture of making an example to discourage others to even try, similar to prison, which we know is not that effective if at all.
I'll also add: when I was a teenager I've been in this position countless times, reporting security issues at school, etc. The reactions I received from fully grown adults was nothing short of stochastic. This fascinated me enough to minor in political science and philosophy/ethics. I draw on that for insight, but it doesn't really provide a final answer.
And multi-billion companies or governments are in the business of bending over customers and effing them. So another guy getting fked is business as usual.
- BKK is the client of T-Systems. They have a contract for the development and maintenance of this system which might contain clauses about liability or indemnification in cases of hacking, security bugs, negligency, etc.
- This guy reported it to BKK who obviously don't have any technical knowledge
- BKK (the client) forwards the email to T-Systems (the contractor): "What's this about? Looks like hacking or something."
- Now T-Systems has two options: 1. Blame it on the guy, or 2. Take the blame for overpromising and screwing it up, possibly taking a financial loss of an unkown amount (depending on the contract and how widespread exploitation was)
It's possible the particular BKK person dealing with the report does not have technical knowledge, but that's more a fail on BKK side as they let incompetent people to deal with reports of security incidents.
But I'd bet it's merely a matter of covering broken shit and shifting blame. BKK is (probably?) a public company, managing transport in the capital city. They manage a lot of money, and it's not uncommon to funnel lucrative contracts to friendly companies, even if it increases price and the quality is dubious. Whoever came up with this project / awarded the contract / accepted the solution is probably scared people might start digging into the details. Better blame the problems on a hacker!
I don't think this is true. When you buy a house, do you have to be able to do the specification and evaluate? This is a good analogy, because T-Systems have delivered similar solutions to other clients, what they needed here is a little bit of tailoring and integration (which is not the part that failed).
I think the hypothetical above is very reasonable. Lots of technical vendors will elect to shift blame. They should take responsibility for their issues, but they often don't.
Perhaps BKK operates in a different way, but well - incompetence is not an excuse. It's a management failure.
To push your analogy further, the non-tech person thinks of this type of exploit discovery as if someone has trespassed onto their private yard in the cover of darkness, trying every door and window.
A tech savvy person might instead think of it as a row of doors lined up next to a busy street, in broad daylight.
Knocking, and telling someone that they have "forgot their keys in the door" seems a bit creepy in the first scenario, but completely legitimate in the second.
Edit: Note that in this analogy the keys aren't fully visible from outside and it requires opening the door to be sure that the keys were accidentally left out
"the sheriff has told everyone that there's a bad dude wandering round town trying doors, and [responsible citizen] noticed that everyone had identical door-keys which would open every lock".
Is that still creepy?
But all kidding aside, It sounds like the sheriff is the hacker. Who has discovered every lock is the exact same through investigation.
That said, a hacker isn't elected to protect people, they are doing it out of the "kindness" of their heart. What a lot of people get in trouble for is hacking first and asking for permission after.
If you go up to a company with a statement like: "I think you may have a vulnerability in your software. I haven't tested this hypothesis (you can verify in your logs), but with your permission, I could check it, and report back to you." Most companies would probably be thankful, others might instead get mad and handle it internally. But if you DON'T hack first, you have nothing to really worry about.
If I logged in to a service and saw an URL like http://example.com/1234/secret_data, calling them with a report of potential vulnerability would be a waste of their and my time 98% of the time. And there's infinite number of such "potential vulnerabilities" to report, too. Like on HN, I see I can edit my profile description over at https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=TeMPOraL. I wonder what happens when I change the 'id' param? Better not try out, but call 'dang immediately!
Discovering an actual vulnerability in the first place requires doing something that could be considered hacking.
If I caught someone trying their key on my door I would call the cops, even if they said they were just testing it to see if it would work.
Perhaps not, but they probably would be tempted to prosecute someone who opened the door with a toothbrush and told them about it...
The temptation is to squash anything that comes along and potentially makes you look like you weren't doing your job properly (installing a better lock in the first place) rather than thank the person and then install a better lock, or fix the design of the lock.
A normal person's reaction upon being told "You left your keys in the lock" is usually gratitude, not calling the cops.
Well, those aren't quite the same thing.
If someone told me I'd left my key in the lock, I'd say thanks and remove the key.
If someone told me I'd left my door unlocked after-hours, I might wonder what they were doing trying my door after-hours in the first place.
In hindsight it was a huge risk and I was dangerously trusting.
What they don't like is the publicity.
Edit: but maybe not in Hungary. It's the bad child in EU.
At first the bank security department said no one will find it so it's safe and later when he pressed the issue as a dangerous leak they reported him to the police for "hacking and extortion". All the computers from his company got confiscated for investigation so he had to buy new computers and software to continue running his company. In the end he was found not guilty by the police investigation of his computers so the prosecution dropped the case (it didn't even go to court) and all his stuff returned after 6 months.
Source in Polish (sorry, there is no English source): https://niebezpiecznik.pl/post/glebokie-ukrycie-danych-w-pko... http://www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-z-kraju,3/haker-mimo-woli,132...
Bank spokesperson later explained that the files were "deeply hidden" ("głębokie ukrycie", he said it's an IT term, it's not) and only one person found them in 4 years of their existence there so it's not a big deal.
And in general misusing, testing, etc. a website is illegal without owners permission, there is now a small exception for acting in good faith but it's narrow, a bit strangely worded and it doesn't prevent stuff like above.
The European commission is currently threatening to remove Poland's voting rights due to the changes to the juridical system, but it will not happen as Hungary will veto.
I think they are on their own cultural axis somehow.
> Edit: but maybe not in Hungary. It's the bad child in EU.
The article suggests that they reported this guy to the police only after the info leaked out (or possibly was independently discovered by others) and made it to the press.
Scapegoating of non-malicious hackers isn't really anything new or unique to Hungary. It's a common reaction of IT-illiterates to people "cheating" on their systems everywhere.
In both cases, they fixed it, thanked me, no arrests or threats were made. I think your experience is only outside the norm in the sense that you got monetary compensation out of it! Nice!
So even technical companies can react in really silly ways.
What isn't cool is legal deciding to go after the party disclosing the vulnerability.
That's because companies routine receive unsolicited product proposals, ideas for new features or enhancements, and the like. Often these overlap with things they have been working on internally but that are not known to the public.
If they let engineers see these unsolicited mails and then later come out with an even vaguely similar feature they may find themselves in an intellectual property dispute with the emailer.
I have previously found a way to access very personal information in a large corporate billing system. When I contacted them I specifically used careful language that what I'd done was unintentional, and easy mistake that could lead others to this, that I kept zero data and exited the system as soon as I realised 'my mistake' and was very surprised. Basically enough that 1) If it should go to court the situation would be in my favour as much as it can be and 2) Given they were a well know public retailer I figured this would hit social media and make an uproar about the company should they act badly.
Initially I contact several people in IT and heard nothing. Six months later when I noticed this was still open. I then contacted the CEO. Expecting nothing or canned 'thanks', we was thankful had some followup contact about the issue.
I wont say there is no risk, but I think its the right thing to do and risk seems minimal. And you can always do it anonymously.
I realize that big incidents are probably the only way to get laypeople to care about IT security in the long run, but still it may be preferable to help averting them when possible for various quite practical reasons.
Assuming you have done the hacking anonymously in the first place.
"I have hacked your system, accessed <this information> and modified <that bit of data>, using <this procedure>. You have <this time> to send <this much> Bitcoins to <this wallet>, or I <copy or trash> your database. Thank you for your attention."
Maybe they will panic strongly enough to actually do something about the issue.
It's risky and scary, but also the right thing to do in some cases.
You could also fail to report at all, and let their ship sink. Maybe they deserved it.
From the hacker "hat classification" perspective, that's obviously black hat, nothing gray about it.
From the legal perspective it's not a debate anymore (like in the original article) if you do this, it's clearly a crime, if you get caught in whatever way (e.g. by bragging about it someplace later that leads to your person, or by testing a "discounted" pass in some place that has cameras), it's a straightforward conviction for extortion.
From the ethical perspective, that is an unethical action, doing that shows that the person is immoral.
But you are right, yes, it can be quite effective, and definitely makes it more likely that they will panic strongly enough to actually do something about the issue. It's just that if this happens, then it's not sufficient to just fix the hole, identifying and catching the perpetrator becomes a big part of what they should be doing.
That's as classic as it can be, there's nothing new or technology related about this - for example, sending an anonymous message "Send cash or I'll burn your house" is a crime (and unethical) even if you don't burn anything. It is a crime (and unethical) even if you're just making an empty threat and never intend to burn anything, it still is extortion.
Arson is one crime, and extortion is a separate crime punishable by itself. If you don't attempt to delete their data then you (obviously) don't get charged with deleting their data, but making threats like that is not acceptable in any way (legal or ethical) whatsoever. Once you press "send" on a message like that, you've crossed a very serious line.
Is there a moral imperative that they are morally required to secure their systems and that others should/could demand that they must do so? It definitely could be in certain cases (for example, a hospital storing confidential data of their customers), but in the usual situation where it's just their data and their money, isn't that their moral right to decide how high a fence (if any!) they want to build around their property?
Telling someone "hey, you forgot to lock your door" is a good thing, but ultimately IMHO it's their decision if they want to lock the door or accept those risks.
The process works reasonably well even if the vendor is not cooperative. In that case it is somewhat similar to the message proposed above, but substantially different - first, the threat is not that you'll destroy or publish their data (which is extortion) but that you'll publish your description of the vulnerability (which generally is not); second, the threat is not that you might consider damaging the data (i.e. stating that you'd be willing to do an immoral thing) instead that some other immoral people might damage the data; and third, the disclosure is not conditional on receiving money from them.
I can see that the proposed threat was meant in the same direction, and is somewhat similar to the "threat" implied in general responsible disclosure, i.e., if you don't fix it in 45 days then we'll publish info that most likely will mean that you'll get hacked. But it's substantially different, the details are quite important, and you'd need a good reason to deviate from the standard responsible disclosure guidelines.
I mean, what do you do when after sending a message "I have hacked your system, accessed <this information> and modified <that bit of data>, using <this procedure>. You have <this time> to send <this much> Bitcoins to <this wallet>, or I <copy or trash> your database. Thank you for your attention." you see that they have not fixed the issue but have transferred the requested Bitcoins? It'd be a possible direct result of your actions. Is that a desirable outcome? Is that an ethical outcome?
I do, however loup-vaillant's post also contained the following, which makes it not immoral nor unethical:
> accessed <this information> and modified <that bit of data>, using <this procedure>. You have <this time>
Also, you need to panic them, you do not necessarily need to delete or copy their data (but even if you did, I see nothing evil in it. They are the ones that refused to fix it within the time given after all).
> It's obviously a crime.
Doesn't mean that it's immoral or unethical.
Threatening to harm someone unless they do what you say is immoral even if you don't harm them; it's not ethically acceptable to threaten others.
If your leaving the door open leaves not only you, but others, vulnerable, the discoverer of the broken lock may very well have a moral obligation to protect those innocent people, by whatever means appropriate.
What is appropriate depends on the situation. I expect in most cases, just telling you the door is open may be enough. But if you are being particularly obnoxious, threats may be the only way. In some extreme cases, burning the house down to avoid the disclosure of the sensitive information that would harm countless innocents may be the best course of action.
The legal system even have analogous situations, where a judge can order the orderly destruction of some unsafe building. The only (yet crucial) difference is, judges aren't vigilantes. But this is fixable: one could have the law allow the vigilante to send a cease & desist letter saying "fix your door or I'll have a judge burn your house down".
Perhaps. But being a crime does not automatically mean something is immoral or unethical.
You have <this time> to fix the issue, or I <copy or trash> your database.
Asking for extortion does not push them to fix their systems, only to pay you and/or find you.
http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/en-cas-dincident/vous-souhaitez-decla...
I think the line is pretty grey though.
One analogy is telling a company that their front door is unlocked.
Another analogy is going into an unlocked front door, and going deeper into the building, and then reporting to the company that you could, in fact, get to classified information from this door.
IRL Pentesters get permission before trying to sneak into buildings, so there's some argument for it being the same for these sorts of things.
EDIT: I 100% think that users that are acting in good faith shouldn't be thrown in prison. This case is a pretty good example of this
In this situation, it would have been difficult to report the parameter tampering without verifying that it actually worked (there're systems that pass params back and forth without apparent use, but they throw an error when client and server states don't match) - and, most probably, the report would have been ignored without the verification.
If that was tantamount to not-breaking & entering, it means the it is okay to legally forbid step by step debugging on your own computer. That it may not be legal to inspect code from another company, even if it runs on your computer. That whatever the code decides (here, the price of the ticket), must be observed by the rest of the system (here, the price sent in the HTTP request wasn't the price decided by the web page).
The consequences of such thinking are chilling. If this is the kind of cyberpunk we're heading to, I'll seriously consider becoming a Runner.
I don't know about Hungary, but in the US the DMCA has exactly these provisions.
Seems somewhat negligent - at the very least from a Good Samaritan™ point of view
It's a choice between the certainty of no loss vs the possibility of great loss.
Better to report anonymously, or report directly to someone who might appreciate or is responsible (and hope they appreciate responsible disclosure).