RE: Publishing Findings on Commercial Applications

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Dear Friend Ralph Forsythe,

I appreciate very much your response. It make sense to me and
after reading lot of mail that I will take internal path to client
& vendor. It is true I paid to do penetration test from client. I
will try convince client to make push so that vendor will patch
product on whole rather than only client. I argue that it is good
for industry if this direction is taken. Maybe client will appear
benevolent also in industry.

Thank you once again friends for reading and taking valuable time
to respond.

Kind Regards,
Jez




On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 02:58:17 +0400 Ralph Forsythe
<rforsythe@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Another question to answer -- Would disclosing the information
discovered
put your client at potential risk?

I'm not sure of the legal ramifications of disclosing a flaw you
found
(even if identifiable information were removed) during a
contracted
pen-test, versus one you found in your own free time. If the
client then
gets violated through your discovery by chance just because of
what they
do, it's conceivable that they could have a case against you.
Yeah I know
people disclose vulnerabilities daily, but generally those people
aren't
being paid by potential targets to find the holes either.

In a roundabout way, you'd be telling the world "here's how to
hack my
client" even without disclosing their name, if that software
package is as
pervasive as you say it is. I know if I were a bank and this
happened to
me, I'd have my legal counsel on the phone in about 3.2 seconds,
if even
to find out I had no case (but I'd still be looking very hard at
it).

If you are 100% sure you have nothing contractual barring it, I'd
still
consult a lawyer to make sure you aren't setting yourself up for a
bad
time. Ethically (and perhaps legally as well) I think contacting
the
vendor first is probably the best path to take. That doesn't mean
you
can't disclose it publically, but you may come to an agreement on
delaying
that email while they prepare a patch. You'll also be more of a
fan to
those banks' customers, who will appreciate the immediate response
rather
than waiting an indeterminate amount of time during which their
accounts
could be vulnerable to who knows what.

- Ralph


On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Sahir Hidayatullah wrote:

Might be a better idea to contact the vendor first.
These days you can get into all sorts of trouble for revealing
flaws.

Besides, it's probably more ethical to work with them first
isn't it ? :)

You could also follow RFP's disclosure policy:
http://www.wiretrip.net/rfp/policy.html

Regards,

--S.


-----Original Message-----
From: Jezebel Ali [mailto:jezebel_ali@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 1:00 AM
To: pen-test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Publishing Findings on Commercial Applications

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Greetings Brother and Sister List Members,

I have question: If I performing Penetration Test on customer
site
and this customer has a commercial application which is not
publicly available for download or purchase, do I have a right
to
publish finding of this application to the public without
mentioning customer name?

This application widely used by banking and financial industry
and
not always available to anyone for testing.

Kind regards,
Jez
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