Security Basics mailing list archives
Re: Unresponsive Vendor
From: "Peter Schawacker" <peter () schawacker com>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 14:21:53 -0800
Matt, This matter might be a better candidate for securityfocus-jobs than securit-basics. To reiterate when I think you'r saying you want to work for a company that needs professional bug hunters but you lack a documented track record. Maybe you could "intern" with the sort of company that the "Unresponsive Vendor"-types would listen to -- like and Bindview, ISS or Symantec. The next time you find a juicy bug, make a partner of one of those companies. All you have to do is find out who's in charge of the security vendor's vulnerability research group, which shouldn't take more than a call to the company's tech support line. Come to think of it, if you post a message to vuln-dev or full disclosure saying that you have a bug to report but that you need a partner with muscle to help with it for FREE, you'll get the right folks to respond. The deal is simple. XYZ security gets first crack at your discovery and in turn they give you credit as a partner. If you play your cards right maybe XYZ pays you, money or beer or something. Your findings are valuable to somebody. I think you know who those somebody's are. There are even companies that pay cash for bugs, aren't there?... Good posts. Best of luck. Peter Peter Schawacker, CISSP peter () schawacker com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Burnett" <marukka () mac com> To: <c_brauckmiller () LEK COM> Cc: <security-basics () securityfocus com> Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 9:25 AM Subject: Re: Unresponsive Vendor Im sorry if you feel that I am being immature, the main reason I would like credit would be to add it to my resume. I haven't worked in 4.5 months and I could use all the help I can get. Potential employers ive talked to seem to like stuff like this. Also I was irked by it because, for other security flaws they have given the notifier credit. If they never gave anyone credit I could understand that, but giving credit to people from well known orgs and not giving credit to just some guy (like me) doesn¹t make much sense. For the person who gave the broken window analogy. I normally wouldn¹t care if it was just some random piece of software. However I use this software on a daily basis. And when I do get another job im sure im going to have to support it there and worry about the security flaw. On 11/20/03 11:00 AM, "c_brauckmiller () LEK COM" <c_brauckmiller () LEK COM> wrote:
I have a couple of comments on this. First, and please don't take this the wrong way, let me state that I think that its a bit imature to complain about not getting credit for discovering a bug/vuln in a software package. I understand that you'd like credit for
your
discovery, but I think your better served just releasing the fact that you have discovered it to the appropriate groups such as BugTraq. That should be credit enough. I wouldn't count on many vendors patting you on the back publicly
and
saying "Yeah we screwed up and this guy found it." Having said that, if you haven't heard from the vendor in a month with
even a
status update...I say screw'em...release the exploit. If they don't have
the
common courtesy to let you know, "Hey..we are working on it." then they
are
not a very good company to begin with and they should be shown that the
security
community won't stand for it. After they get nailed a couple times,
hopefully
they will reconsider their methods. My 2 cents worth. Craig Matt Burnett <marukka () mac com> on 11/19/2003 02:02:57 PM To: security-basics () securityfocus com cc: (bcc: Craig Brauckmiller/LEK) Subject: Unresponsive Vendor I have a moral question for all of you. I have notified a major software company in the past about security issues with their software. I did email them with enough details to replicate the issue. However they never responded to my email, and a couple years later they fixed the issue and
did
not give credit were due. I'm sure other researchers contacted them with a similar but different way to exploit the flaw, but no one at all is given credit. Now I have a local d0s for their product and have contacted them again, this time via phone. After notifying them they gave me a case
number
and said a engineer would be in contact with me in approximately a week.
I'm
guessing that something similar will happen and this issue wont get fixed for a while, and once again I wont get credit. I'm just wondering what
would
be a fair time frame before releasing a exploit, and what I could/should
do
about receiving credit. I have looked at some papers online about when you should release a exploit but none i've read yet give any guidance on what you should do if the vendor is dragging their feet. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Current thread:
- RE: Unresponsive Vendor, (continued)
- RE: Unresponsive Vendor Bob Beck (Nov 20)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor Byron Sonne (Nov 20)
- RE: Unresponsive Vendor Bruce Davis (Nov 20)
- RE: Unresponsive Vendor Tim Donahue (Nov 20)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor JohnNicholson (Nov 20)
- RE: Unresponsive Vendor mrodrigu (Nov 20)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor Meritt James (Nov 21)
- RE: Unresponsive Vendor Randy Golly (Nov 20)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor c_brauckmiller (Nov 20)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor Matt Burnett (Nov 20)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor Peter Schawacker (Nov 20)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor Matt Burnett (Nov 21)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor Matt Burnett (Nov 20)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor Pieter-Bas IJdens (Nov 21)
- RE: Unresponsive Vendor Meidinger Chris (Nov 21)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor mrodrigu (Nov 21)
- Re: Unresponsive Vendor Matt Burnett (Nov 21)