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It depends on the company. Many companies have bug bounty or vulnerability disclosure programs that explicitly guarantee safe harbor+protections for researchers.

However, not all organizations are happy to be contacted about security issues. Sometimes doing the right thing can still result in (threats of) legal repercussions.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/missouri-gov-cal...

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The bug bounties are usually pretty clear that you aren't allowed to make changes in the production systems. Here they made many changes - including changing the name of a release.

The bug bounties also prefer seeing a working attack instead of theoretical reports. So not sure how they could have tested their attack in this situation without making actual changes.

It depends. Sometimes companies only permit testing in specific test domains, other times they permit it as long as your activity is clearly identifiable (e.g., including a custom header in all request).

It does seem like walking a precarious tight rope.

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