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Comment by dsl | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully BeyondTrust will use the opportunity to also train him in responsible disclosure.

Regardless of the response you get from a vendor, you don't make use of an exploit against a vulnerable target. That is the line that separates the good guys from the bad. Period.

Facebook has invested heavily in sandbox environments and automated generation of test accounts with test data explicitly for researchers to help demonstrate vulnerabilities. It is even mentioned many times on the page where you go to find the address to report issues to and learn about the bounty program.

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In order of desirability, the methods of dealing with a discovered exploit are:

1. Report to vendor and do not publicly discuss until they've fixed it

2. Demonstrate the exploit in public to prove that it works

3. Sell on the black market to Mafia/NSA/etc

The guy attempted approach (1), and didn't do a very good job of it, but it seems this was at least in part due to inexperience. Should he have worked more carefully to pursue option (1) first? Sure. But Facebook should have asked him for more information, perhaps pointing him to the guidelines.

So next he went to option (2). Facebook found the bug, and fixed it. Option (2) is infinitely better than option (3). I think Facebook should be extremely grateful to this guy - he even apologised for having to take this option in his post on MZ's wall, after (1) failed. Regardless of his & facebook's mistakes, they still should be thankful for him reporting it.

Option 2 is not "Post on real user's account", option 2 is "create account, use" or "use on established test account".

He was wrong, period, to post to a user's page. 100% wrong, and has no right to ask for the money, because of that. Facebook's response is exactly the correct response - fix the miscommunication, but remain firm in the denial of money to someone who broke clear rules.

> "create account, use"

You mean create a fake account? Isn't that against TOS?

> "use on established test account"

Where the instructions are in English, even after changing language?

> He was wrong, period, to post to a user's page

Mark Z. is not just any user. FB is publicly traded, yes, but he is basically Facebook. It's not like he 'hacked into' someone's account.

>You mean create a fake account? Isn't that against TOS?

FB allows the creation of test accounts for security research https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/accounts/

The initial proof of concept post went to another user, not Mark Z. That was Facebook's basis for denying the claim.

You're right. Point withdrawn.

You're being a bit silly about this. The actual harm was nil.

it might be technically correct, but people don't behave like machines, so the expected outcome in the future is not clear.

Lets not forget Mark himself was charged with breaching security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy by Harvard's disciplinary board for students - he turned out ok.

There's a difference between "This is not a bug" and "We don't have enough information to proceed with your report. Can you please follow the guidelines here for a more detailed one? Thanks for your help."

If you want responsible disclosure, the guy just did the first step, reporting to your security team privately. Guide him, learn the thing, reward and move on.

I'm torn on this one. A while back I reported an exploit I'd found to a vendor to also get a back a "not a bug" response. Next version in their software had it fixed. They didn't have a bug bounty and I didn't have much interest in it past that I'd rather if fixed that not.

If there had been a small bounty on the line and it would have played out the same way, I'm not sure how I would have handled it. I'm all for responsible disclosure and wouldn't have any interest in posting it online or exploiting it. But what is the correct response if money is owed and you've already shared the exploit with the vendor?

In all fairness he did attempt to report it. Although very poorly. He an email saying in essence 'I found a bug' instead of 'If you change the id on the submit function of the post button you can submit to other walls.' If we would have sent the latter I think they would have paid more attention to him.

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