I am confused, they didn't contact the company at all and just disclose this publicly? Very immature handling of a vulnerability finding.
I'll admit it is a bit funny and the damage caused is tiny(just the price of the food). However, things like this do harm the reputation of bug-bounty hunters.
I've worked in lambda web editor (not in Git) and my lead considered replacing sql injection with parameterised queries was a distraction/insubordination. Cant wait till audits, data breach insurance and imprisonment becomes the reality.
Lazy API that did not vet a simple backdoor?
Good coders but accidentally pushed the debug version of the API?
I am going to have to say the second option feels less likely (yes, I have been called cynical).
It was just an example. Maybe they knew.
Everyone who designed engineering requirements, technical requirements, test plan, everyone who wrote technical specifications, everyone who performed traceability. It was all approved by security engineers and management.
> The company was founded during the pandemic when contactless dining became popular.
There were tons of people intimately aware of the issue, yet for four years nobody cared.
Private disclosure is for when you believe the company cares about security but made a genuine mistake. For the company in the OP it would be more like free education in fundamental privacy and ethics. They're not entitled to that. Name and shame.
There's little public benefit in responsible disclosure here; all it would lead to is the whole thing being swept under the rug with some trivial "fix". There's lots of public benefit in immediate, wide disclosure - the scramble to fix this under pressure from vendors before potential abuse, and any real or imagined attempt at abuse, and subsequent lawsuits, would go far towards educating people and the industry about privacy, security, and bad business practice. It's a nice low real damage, high publicity case.
It's not like this stuff is new. But without serious pressure, the businesses will never learn and never stop making or enrolling into such systems.
Anyway, if it happened over here in the EU, I'd do the responsible disclosure thing and give a full, detailed advance expose to the local Data Protection Authority.
(And if I sound adversarial, then consider that neither the vendor developing such systems, nor the venues using them, are doing it in the interest of the customers.)
I think most people would acknowledge there's a big difference.
Which would still be wrong but you're implying that the business is the victim here when it's the complete opposite.
Nothing wrong about that. Of course still doesn't justify publishing/providing access to client data who did nothing wrong.
Of course in other places, there aren't really any good options. So I guess the most "moral" approach would be to what you think would cause most financial damage to the business and discourage people from going there.
No, this is not some obscure security hole they forgot about. This is plain incompetence and/or deliberate design decisions.
I agree that full public disclosure like this is irresponsible, but exposing issues like this to the public is the only way for such companies to make a change or, preferably, lose business and shutdown.
It feels like the usual case of vendors buying service to better exploit the users, and themselves getting burned and/or exploited by that service too.
It would be different if for example the application was showing data for other customers through normal use of it, but even if there is no other barrier to access than changing an id that is considered bypassing access control and can result in jail time in most places. Now I'm not an expert in India's computer misuse laws but I am willing to wager they are not the most progressive when it comes to this kind of thing.
Most likely the company will blame them for trying to help. Also, if the company is so incompetent that they allow this why bother. He's not getting paid to be their test engineer.