PwC Sends Legal Threats To Researchers Who Found Critical Security Flaw (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A security research firm has released details of a "critical" flaw in a security tool, despite being threatened with legal threats. The advisory said that an attacker could "manipulate accounting documents and financial results, bypass change management controls, and bypass segregation of duties restrictions," which could result in "fraud, theft or manipulation of sensitive data," as well as the "unauthorized payment transactions and transfer of money." An attacker could also add a backdoor to the affected server, the advisory said. The researchers contacted and met with PwC in August to discuss the scope of the flaw. As part of its responsible disclosure policy, the researchers gave PwC three months to fix the flaw before a public advisory would be published. Three days later, the corporate giant responded with legal threats. A portion of the cease-and-desist letter, seen by ZDNet, said that PwC demanded the researchers "not release a security advisory or similar information" relating to the buggy software. The legal threat also said that the researchers are not to "make any public statements or statements to users" of the software. The researchers told PwC that they would publicly disclose their findings once the three-month window expires, which is in line with industry standard disclosure practices. That was when PwC hit the security firm with a second cease-and-desist letter. Undeterred, the researchers released a security advisory a little over two weeks later.

Comments

Re:Wait a second

[Zephyn]

Just to help you out I've provided a translation for you.

USA American attention span: 3 lines, 5 words each.

Canadian American attention span: Moose

Correction:

Canadian attention span: 4 lines, 3 defensive pairs, 2 goalies

Re: first

[hawguy]

pen as in a pen or is that supposed to be short for something?

Duh, it should be obvious from the context. PwC is an accounting firm. Accounting firms use a lot of pens. It would be ludicrous to give an accountant a non-functional pen, so they have a pen testing division that runs each pen through a battery of tests before they deploy it to an accountant.