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Re: Student expelled from Montreal college after finding vulnerability that compromised security of 250, 000


From: Daniel Richards <kyhwana () gmail com>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:48:37 +1300

The correct answer you're looking for is: Sell it on the black
vulnerability/exploit market. Profit!


On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Sanguinarious Rose
<SanguineRose () occultusterra com> wrote:
And that is the reason why no one wants to report anything they find,
it's because of people like you and your kind of thinking.

Did they public post all the private information?
No

Did they try to use it for malious or illicit purposes?
No

Did they report it when they found it?
Yes

A horrible moral compass indeed! Arrest these people for being
concerned and reporting it after stumbling upon security flaws!
Amiright?

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Nick FitzGerald
<nick () virus-l demon co uk> wrote:
Jeffrey Walton wrote:

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Philip Whitehouse <philip () whiuk com> wrote:
Moreover, he ran it again after reporting it to see if it was still there.
Essentially he's doing an unauthorised pen test having alerted them that
he'd done one already.
If his personal information is in the proprietary system, I believe he
has every right to very the security of the system.

BUT how can he "verify" (I assume that was the word you meant?") proper
security of _his_ personal details?  He would have to test using
someone _else's_ access credentials.  That is "unauthorized access" by
most relevant legislation in most jurisdictions.

Alternately, he could try accessing someone else's data from his login,
and that is equally clearly unauthorized access.

He and his colleague who originally discovered the flaw may have used
each other's access credentials to access their own data, or used their
own credentials to access the other's data _in agreement between
themselves_ BUT in so doing most likely broke the terms of service of
the system/their school/etc, _equally_ putting them afoul of most
unauthorized access legislation.

Is he allowed to "opt-out" of the system (probably not)? If not, he
has a responsibility to check.

BUT he has no resposibility to check on anyone _else's_ data and no
_authority_ to use anyone else's credentials to check on his own.

So, what "responsibility" does he really have?

It sounds like he should have left well alone once he had reported this
to the university and the vendors.  That he did not have the sense or
moral compass to recognize that tells us something important about him.



Regards,

Nick FitzGerald


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_______________________________________________
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_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/


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