I don't think I had a problem with "heartleech" until I read this comment. What exactly does Snort's TLS decoding have to do with extracting private keys from servers? That's not the bug. The bug is OpenSSL leaking memory when it receives a malformed TLS heartbeat. You could have demonstrated that without publishing "find_private_key()".

I think you published this because it was fun to write. "Auto pwn", as you call it, has nothing to do with convincing Snort to do anything.

I don't believe you agree with Daniel Weber's argument at all. Don't dodge it by making things up. Engage with it directly. I wouldn't think it would be that difficult for you to knock down.