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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.
Companies like PwC cannot grasp the concept of a earning money and behaving ethically at the same time.
Many a head must have been scratched in trying to understand why their threats failed. "Did the researchers not understand they were being threatened?". "Why would they do the right thing if it could cost them money?". "It's almost decided to do what would be best for other people instead of themselves.".
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A larger bit of context here is that this wasn't a business unit that makes hockey pucks. This was a business unit that is involved in cybersecurity. So for them to show ignorance of how things should be done with regard to this...ugh.
On the other hand, PwC is a partnership organization, not a corporation. As such, a lot of control is decentralized; partners are responsible for the business beneath them and while that responsibility does run upwards, with every step up there's an order of magnitude by which detail is removed. So fundamentally this could be one guy getting his panties in a wad over things.
But still...he should know better.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Because only the plebs go to prison.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
This will likely going to be very expensive for the security researchers, as PricewaterhouseCoopers have deep pockets and a history of shady litigations.
Assholes like PwC is why most security researchers don't bother with responsbile disclosure. It is by far much safer to anonymously dump it to pastebin.