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Groupon Refuses To Pay Security Expert Who Found Serious XSS Site Bugs

Posted by samzenpus on from the pay-the-man dept.

Mark Wilson writes: Bounty programs benefit everyone. Companies like Microsoft get help from security experts, customers gain improved security, and those who discover and report vulnerabilities reap the rewards financially. Or at least that's how things are supposed to work. Having reported a series of security problems to discount and deal site Groupon, security researcher Brute Logic from XSSposed.org was expecting a pay-out — but the site refuses to give up the cash. In all, Brute Logic reported more than 30 security issues with Groupon's site, but the company cites its Responsible Disclosure policy as the reason for not handing over the cash.

1 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Editorial slant much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a dispute between two parties. I realize "company bad!" is everyone's default, but there ARE two sides to this story, and presenting one side with a heavy editorial slant is rarely productive.

    Here are what appear to be the facts: A security researcher found several flaws on groupon.com. It's likely they were related, though how much so isn't directly stated. These flaws were reported to Groupon. At least some details related to at least some of the flaws were published online for a period of time, which may or may not be inadvertent. Groupon's stated policy is to reward researchers for reporting bugs, with a condition that the bugs are not also disclosed publicly before Groupon can address them. Groupon has declined to pay in this case because of the online posting.

    Whether this is reasonable or horrible depends on a number of factor, for which we have only one person's word. Was the publishing of details inadvertent, or deliberate? How long was the post up? Did the post describe all the flaws, or just some? How detailed was the online description? Was the post proactively taken down by the author because it was posted "in error," or was it in response to Groupon's policy? How long did Groupon have information about this vulnerability before the online disclosure? All of these would affect my belief about who's being unreasonable to whom here.