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Comment by bjeds | Hacker News Reader

I'd be a bit careful if I were you. Bug bounty programs are after all the exception rather than the rule - the security equivalent of open sourcing software - an active decision by the company to sign away normal rights and normal legal protection.

If you find a vuln and publish it and the company does not have an explicit bug bounty program allowing such things, you may be sued or face other legal action.

I know several security researchers who have been sued for hacking, in many countries (mostly across US and Europe), because they assumed they were doing a "good thing", whereas the law doesn't care - it only cares about what is legal or not legal. Apart from the hacking charges, the very nature of bug bounties means it's pretty easy for the lawyers to add a coercion/blackmailing charge as well, which makes it more serious.

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There are strong protections in the US regarding vulnerability disclosure due to freedom of speech. If you are able to run software that you own which doesn't have any anti-reverse-engineering ToS on your own computers, you are generally in the clear to publish knowledge of flaws that you find while inspecting the software on your computer.

This doesn't mean that you won't get sued, but it does increase your likelihood of winning such lawsuits when you haven't committed any crimes during your security research & disclosure.

You are not required to ever tell the affected parties at all, and afaik you are also free to stockpile and sell exploits as long as you only sell them domestically (IANAL & TINLA).

That's true, but in my experience vulnerability researchers mostly focus on the online presence/product of internet-active companies (the FAANG:s of the world, and their smaller competitors - companies that could realistically be on HackerOne/BugCrowd without standing out like a sore thumb).

If you've bought some software you install on your computer - like the good old days ( :) ), it's more fair game as you said.

"The law" doesn't sue anyone so the company is the one that "doesn't care". The law (if in a functional system) doesn't follow the letter of the law but the spirit of the law. Otherwise we wouldn't need a court but just a clerk or a low-level AI.

There're only three categories IMO (besides black hat):

1) The researcher disclose a vulnerability the proper way and all's good

2) The "researcher" did something that could cause harm and were punished

3) The system is utterly broken

I have seen all happen and the ones people are up in arms about have always been in category 2 or 3. Your last sentence about blackmail is in category 2 as demanding money for a proper disclosure from someone without a bug bounty program is the definition of blackmail.

For anyone else who was wondering what the legal definition of blackmail might look like, 18 U.S.C. § 873:

"Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."

Coercion/blackmail is going to be hard to argue when you've never asked the company for anything, nor made any offer that would involve them giving you anything.

I consider going public directly less risky than talking to the company first: They're much more likely to make legal threats/try to sue you if they think it can help hide their embarrassment. Once public, that incentive goes away, they're in the public eye, if they do go after you they can no longer prevent the disclosure, and you have a decent chance that the additional attention this generates will make them reconsider before you have to spend money on lawyers.

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