My advice would be NOT to contact the financial institution as from
there point of view they wont be willing to take any risk and they will
overreact.
NOT to contact the authority unless a crime has been committed has
there job starts only at that time and they wont address any other
problem.
IMHO the only solution is to tell a security community such as a
mailing list or SANS or whatever what the problem is a do it
anonymously to avoid further troubles.
As a matter of fact it is the financial institutions responsibility to
care about there own security so either they have implemented something
so that you could push the information to them either they don't for
business/marketing purpose and they should retrieve the information
from a public area.
Trying to help the other when they don't want because it could trouble
them for many reasons is never a good idea.
YB
On 25-Jul-07, at 6:21 PM, gjgowey@tmo.blackberry.net wrote:
Who needs to sign up? Just point your mail client at the smtp server
in the banks Mx record and you can use bogus from: information.
Granted you're exposing you IP address, but that's only meaningful if
they decide to subponea your ISP which they could do to hotmail then
your ISP anyway if they're that determined to find you.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Chris Halverson" <darus.integration@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:33:41
To:security-basics@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Bank Exploit
Sign up an email account as one of your not so close "friends" and
send the email on their behalf. :)
You could do so through a 3rd party, reputable security vendor such as
sophos or similar. They might help with the information disclosure.
CH
On 7/25/07, Jax Lion <jv4l1n4@gmail.com> wrote:
So Jason - what happened to your collegue?
IMHO - I don't think option 2 is a good idea. Questions will come up
such as - how did you discover the vulnerability in the first place.
What were you doing... and it all goes downhill from there.
I don't agree with keeping quiet either...
Is there a medium where we can report the "accidental discoveries"
without risk of prosecution? Like a hot tip line with the FBI or
something.
On 7/25/07, Jason Thompson <securitux@gmail.com> wrote:
Risky... is this person a security professional?
This has happened to one of my colleagues before as well. There are
two solutions that are possible:
1) Do not reveal this or tell anyone about it. Leave it be. As there
is this heightened sense of urgency among banks to thwart potential
attackers the person could be in trouble with the bank for simply
discovering the issue. It really all depends on the person he or she
deals with there. Not saying it would hold up in court, it likely
wouldn't, but anyone who has the ability to find exploits is
generally
regarded in a dim light by those who are uneducated on the subject.
2) Notify the bank's incident response team / security staff, OFFER a
non-disclosure agreement to them saying that you will not disclose
this to anyone regardless of what actions the bank decides to take on
their vulnerability, and state that this was discovered by accident
and that he or she simply wants to notify them about the issue and IS
NOT seeking ANY SORT of compensation. If they are notified and it
follows with the statement 'I would be willing to help consult you on
the solution for a small compensation' it instantly becomes extortion
and this person will likely be thrown in jail.
I am not a lawyer by any means, I am simply speaking from past
experiences and what I have seen happen to those who did things the
right way and the wrong way.
Solution 2 is a lot easier if your friend's client works in
information security and holds federal clearances and security
designations. Real ones, not Cisco or something :)
-J
On 25 Jul 2007 13:34:29 -0000, securityz@delahunty.com
<securityz@delahunty.com> wrote:
Friend of mine (not me, really) is working with a client of his who
claims to have inadvertently discovered a few web exploits of
several financial institutions. Does anyone have any insights as
to how this guy could bring these to the attention of the
organizations involved without being seen as a hacker? His minimal
goal is to help the institutions, optimally he would like to
consult to help them rectify the issues.
thx
Steve
