we really do not want to engineer a system in which using bugs to make money is considered economically legitimate activity. It is still crime. The main reason to report bugs and get the bounties for doing so is still because it makes the world safer and healthier. The money is there to make is to incentivize the work of finding and reporting them -- not to outbid the bad actors.
Companies sometimes reward their employees with important bug fixes. When I worked on a big dev team, we'd even decide what were the most important fixes and give people a special 5k bonus or something.
But they weren't security issues necessarily. I never thought about it, fixing a huge performance issue is big. A security fix that gets caught early makes no noise so you just don't know how important it would have been. We also once had a really terrible bug that lead to lots of customers getting effectively attacked.
"Crime" is very flexible term. One country's criminal is another country hero. Maybe the author would sell the vulnerability to an organization making exploits for government use.
"Safety" is also a relative thing, when the world is safer for one party, it is usually worse for another.
It's one thing to hold something for ransom ("give me $5M or I release the 0day"). It's another to sell a valuable piece of information ("give me $5M if you want the 0day"). As long as you're only offering the bug to the company who would be impacted by its release, there's nothing unethical about asking for payment.
Maybe you think that, ethically, all bugs should be reported, regardless of payment, because it prevents harm. Well a lot of things prevent harm that we don't all take it upon ourselves to do voluntarily. Should everyone do all safety-related work for free? If we don't want to do it for free, should we not do safety work at all?
If the company really wanted it safe, and they can't make it safe themselves, they can pay someone else to make it safe. If they aren't willing to do that, then nobody is obligated to do free work for them, because we don't require anyone else to do safety-critical work for free. Let's not forget, this isn't a scrappy startup struggling for a seed round, this is one of the world's largest corporations with billions of dollars in cash. If they want your labor, make them pay for it.
Well, someone did decide to tell google about this in exchange for a thousand dollars (albeit unclear how much the money was the motivator). Doesn't that mean the market did decide in google's favour?
Someone decided to tell Google about this in exchange for an unknown amount of money, chosen unilaterally by Google at a later date, at which point the market value of the vulnerability is $0.
In the past I would have thought this would incentivize finding bugs that might never be found. However it is now clear that all bugs that can be found will be found. So this makes a ton of sense.
Google directly competes with the grey market for vulnerabilities. They are competitive in a bunch of different directions:
* They pay for vulnerabilities without reliable exploits (more for vulnerabilities that are demonstrably reliable).
* They don't require you to actually build a reliable exploit chain.
* They pay up front, not in tranches.
* They work with essentially all comers, unlike the grey market, where you're generally subcontracting to sell your first few.
They pay in plain old money, too. On the market your counterparty will be a criminal who is trying to scam you every step of the way.
Not so much, the grey market is pretty well structured.
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we really do not want to engineer a system in which using bugs to make money is considered economically legitimate activity. It is still crime. The main reason to report bugs and get the bounties for doing so is still because it makes the world safer and healthier. The money is there to make is to incentivize the work of finding and reporting them -- not to outbid the bad actors.
Companies sometimes reward their employees with important bug fixes. When I worked on a big dev team, we'd even decide what were the most important fixes and give people a special 5k bonus or something.
But they weren't security issues necessarily. I never thought about it, fixing a huge performance issue is big. A security fix that gets caught early makes no noise so you just don't know how important it would have been. We also once had a really terrible bug that lead to lots of customers getting effectively attacked.
"Crime" is very flexible term. One country's criminal is another country hero. Maybe the author would sell the vulnerability to an organization making exploits for government use.
"Safety" is also a relative thing, when the world is safer for one party, it is usually worse for another.
Having secure browsers, encryption etc. actually clearly benefits the world. No “but think about the children/terrorists” please.
> we really do not want to engineer a system in which using bugs to make money is considered economically legitimate activity. It is still crime.
"Making money from bugs" is not solely a black-market activity. There are plenty of grey and even white hat activities in this market.
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> The main reason to report bugs and get the bounties for doing so is still because it makes the world safer and healthier.
Yeah let's see how this plays out, paying people less than their time is worth for RCEs.
Finding bugs is hardly a crime, selling them even isn't.
Now exploiting them? Yes that's a crime.
> using bugs to make money
Aka security research.
It's one thing to hold something for ransom ("give me $5M or I release the 0day"). It's another to sell a valuable piece of information ("give me $5M if you want the 0day"). As long as you're only offering the bug to the company who would be impacted by its release, there's nothing unethical about asking for payment.
Maybe you think that, ethically, all bugs should be reported, regardless of payment, because it prevents harm. Well a lot of things prevent harm that we don't all take it upon ourselves to do voluntarily. Should everyone do all safety-related work for free? If we don't want to do it for free, should we not do safety work at all?
If the company really wanted it safe, and they can't make it safe themselves, they can pay someone else to make it safe. If they aren't willing to do that, then nobody is obligated to do free work for them, because we don't require anyone else to do safety-critical work for free. Let's not forget, this isn't a scrappy startup struggling for a seed round, this is one of the world's largest corporations with billions of dollars in cash. If they want your labor, make them pay for it.
>Well a lot of things prevent harm that we don't all take it upon ourselves to do voluntarily. Should everyone do all safety-related work for free?
Thanks for putting it like that, it changed my opinion on the subject.
If it's normal to expect people to be compensated for other security work, it implies it should also be normal to compensate security researches.
> using bugs to make money [is a crime]
No it’s not lol
Well, someone did decide to tell google about this in exchange for a thousand dollars (albeit unclear how much the money was the motivator). Doesn't that mean the market did decide in google's favour?
Someone decided to tell Google about this in exchange for an unknown amount of money, chosen unilaterally by Google at a later date, at which point the market value of the vulnerability is $0.
There's no way money is the motivator.
Money is not the only coin to pay someone in.
Blackhat markets will always be able to pay better. Selling to Google though you aren't chancing jail time.
> Blackhat markets will always be able to pay better.
... than Google?
> Selling to Google though you aren't chancing jail time.
Why would you go to jail for selling a vulnerability? It's free speech.
"Aiding and Abetting" crime is also a crime. Free speech has nothing to do with it.
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Telling someone the steps to rob a bank world probably catch you some charges, I'm assuming.
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They would be broke quick.
In the past I would have thought this would incentivize finding bugs that might never be found. However it is now clear that all bugs that can be found will be found. So this makes a ton of sense.
> In the past I would have thought this would incentivize finding bugs that might never be found.
Isn't that a good thing?
> However it is now clear that all bugs that can be found will be found. So this makes a ton of sense.
If Google can find all the bugs nowadays, presumably with AI, why still pay a bug bounty? At least by this logic, bug bounties make less sense now.
Sure they make sense — you need some incentive to drive the price to zero.
Because there’s still a sizable group of people who see $1,000 from Google as more than $1,000.
Even a resume item.