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When I was still in university I reported a vulnerability and when the company started threatening me with legal action, my professor wrote a strongly worded email and they dropped it. Haven't had it since in 8 years. Feels like many companies understand what we do now, atleast compared to 10 years ago.

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This seems depressingly common in universities. I know of a case where someone discovered anyone with a university account (so students, etc.) can edit DNS, and the IT tried to file charges until the head of CS department intervened.

Many years ago when I was at school, I found a paper on a table in the computing library with a list of root passwords for some of the machines at Yale, just sitting there. I tried one and it was valid (this was the old days when remote root logins were a thing). I sent the admins a message telling them, and I was entirely ignored. A month later I tried the password again and it was still good. Luckily for me, I guess, it was before the days of suing people for trying to be helpful.

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