> Frankly he could have just sold the vulnerability to the highest bidder
Why? Ethics aside, is everything money?
Why? Ethics aside, is everything money?
Ethics aside, why not? That's why we have ethics.
For me, doing the right thing is beyond all these things, and I don't care about money beyond buying the necessities I need.
Money often starts out as necessity or one of it's close cousins. If I were 1) 8k miles away from my target, 2) in a region with more internet access than employment prospects and 3) needed to eat, I can see a path to profitable disclosure.
> For me, doing the right thing is beyond all these things,
This can be a luxury. After a year or 3 of kids in and out of hunger, what's right can get reframed.
> and I don't care about money beyond buying the necessities I need.
Getting beyond that is the thing.
That...is ethics, no?
Ethics is our answer for those that can't.
However of course in reality, empathy only gets you so far. Should you feel empathy for a CSA consumer because their feelings are important too? Do you empathise with their feelings?
> but I suppose these perfectly selfless people might exist
I don't suppose you read what I typed. Empathy is not the setting of self aside, but the experience of feeling what someone else would in a given scenario. It is deeply selfish.
I would also say it is a prerequisite for an organized system of ethics.
Professional value that doesn't translate into money, do you mean? How do you categorise that?
So this security researcher can keep doing his research without worrying about paying bills. The company gets cheap security audit, the researcher gets money, everybody wins
Edit: As I noted elsewhere, necessities are something else.