Facebook, Researcher Spar Over Instagram Flaw Disclosure (exfiltrated.com)

msm1267 writes: A security researcher is in a bit of a scrum with Facebook over vulnerability disclosures that not only tested the boundaries of the social network's bug bounty program, but he said, also prompted hints of legal and criminal action, which Facebook has since denied. Wesley Wineberg, a contract employee of security company Synack, said today that he had found some weaknesses in the Instagram infrastructure that allowed him to access source code for recent versions of Instagram, SSL certificates and private keys for Instagram.com, keys used to sign authentication cookies, email server credentials, and keys for more than a half-dozen critical other functions, including iOS and Android app signing keys and iOS push notification keys. Wineberg also accessed employee accounts and passwords, some of which he cracked, and had access to Amazon buckets storing user images and other data prompting claims of user privacy violations from Facebook.

Comments

Compromise

[penguinoid]

Post the full details, everything, on your Facebook account. That way if they don't like it they can just delete it.

When the CSO is involved it is a coverup.

[EmperorOfCanada]

One of the problems with bug bounties is information control. I am not talking about the bugs leaking out or making the company look bad so much as the information is then clear for the higher ups in the company to see what bugs the outside world is discovering. Thus those in charge of security look at bug bounties as career damaging information they can't control. I am willing to guess that many submissions are made to bug bounty gathering organizations that are complete crap. People no doubt write in vague things such as "You are using the Monkey BM operating system which is known to have many flaws. You can send the cheque to ..." Thus it is probably easy for the CSO to take a genuine flaw and file it under the category "spurious". The worse the flaw, and the more clear the evidence as to how damming it is no doubt are the ones that they want to make go away the fastest. The CSO probably is used to being Tyrannical to his own employees and many other employees of the company. Can you imagine if he called your boss within the company and indicated that you were presenting a threat to the company?

So when he pulled this shit and called up a company out of the blue he probably thought his reign of terror would apply there too.

So if I were his boss I would not only look into this one case but I would look to see how many other cases he suppressed. Then, I would carefully look into his behaviour in the office. I would suggest that they hire an outside company that can do anonymous surveying of his immediate underlings and others that he has dealt with to see if he is a bully. I would also look into any firings that he was involved with; especially if they were outside his direct purview. Did he have some guy escorted out of the building because he wanted his parking space?

Warning, do not try at home

[phantomfive]

access source code for recent versions of Instagram, SSL certificates and private keys for Instagram.com, keys used to sign authentication cookies, email server credentials, and keys for more than a half-dozen critical other functions, including iOS and Android app signing keys and iOS push notification keys. Wineberg also accessed employee accounts and passwords, some of which he cracked

Warning: if you are going do security research, don't access all that stuff (without permission from the company), it can be completely illegal.
People have literally gone to jail for accessing less than this guy did. Whether you think it should be illegal or not, it is illegal and you should be more careful than he was.

Re:Warning, do not try at home

[Xest]

Yeah, as much as I hate to defend Facebook here, I fail to see how Facebook is in the wrong here, it's clear the guy didn't just find an exploit, but used it to scour into the deepest depths of Facebooks network and to exfiltrate the most sensitive of data.

That's not security research uncovering a vulnerability, that's outright hacking in to Instagram and then saying "Oh I was just doing you a favour" after the fact.

When you find an exploit you report it, if instead you delve into the system and start to not only exfiltrate sensitive data, but start breaking the encryption on it too, then you're going beyond mere discovery into a fully fledged attack, and as you say, for that to be legal it requires actual permission.

The security "researcher" in this article is genuinely the bad guy here, he's broken just about every rule in the book of ethical security research.

There's no reason to crack the passwords. Knowing that the encryption used is crackable is sufficient enough for a report, just as knowing that Amazon bucket access info is sufficient enough for a report without needing to delve into them and copy private data from them onto your own computer.

Re:Warning, do not try at home

[Xest]

No they're not, if someone leaves their car door unlocked, and you tell them, and they still don't lock it, it doesn't give you the right to go for a joyride, break a few speed limits, and run a few people over. No matter what the circumstances, it's pretty clear this guy broke numerous laws regardless of how inept Facebook were.

The best you can do if someone doesn't act when you alert them is to go public, and hope that scares them into taking the issue a bit more seriously.

Re:Facebook's statement

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook isn't wrong though. There isn't a single white-hat penetration tester out there who will say its ok to access systems you aren't given permission to access, even if its in the act of discovering vulnerabilities that you intend to disclose. He found a vulnerability in their system and instead of reporting it immediately he decided to see how deep that particular rabbit hole went. He used credentials that did not belong to him to access systems he did not have permission to access, a direct violation of many countries' laws (including the US where those servers are housed). This "security researcher" did way more than discover and disclose a vulnerability, he also took advantage of that vulnerability without permission from facebook, in direct violation of most countries' laws. If I was facebook I wouldn't just not pay the guy, I would consider legal action as well. It should not be acceptable to be able to hack into someone's servers if only you report it to them later. Who knows if this individual "security researcher" or his company might have decided to keep some of those private certs and credentials around for future use. Just because this one might not have doesn't mean the next one wouldn't. This behavior is unacceptable from a supposed "security researcher", especially since he should know better.

Re:Facebook's statement

[Cederic]

Yeah, it's weird that he's pissed off with them after he's the one that broke multiple laws.

Whether they're incompetent fuckwits exploiting two billion people is totally irrelevant, he still broke the law and shouldn't be surprised if legal action follows.

If he's lucky it'll only be civil action.

Re: Facebook's statement

[bill_mcgonigle]

> There isn't a single white-hat penetration tester out there who will say its ok to access systems you aren't given permission to access, even if its in the act of discovering vulnerabilities that you intend to disclose.

If you're not hired by FB but are probing their systems to look for vulnerabilities as their bounty system encourages, you cannot meet the criterion you outline.

The goal apparently needs to be more clear: if FB's goal is to find as many problems as possible then stopping at the first problem and closing that door does not achieve the goal.

Unless we hear that he sold the info to a third party, it looks like there's no victim here and FB looks bad for overreacting when it got caught with its pants down (wait ... Instagram, not Snapchat).