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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.
Well this company completely missed the memo regarding the Streisand effect. This company obviously thought that using lawyers and burying the truth was cheaper than fixing the problem. Now, not only will they have to fix the problem, their users will be aware of the fact that the company tried to hide it from the users of the software. Talk about damage of trust. This company may also get hammered in court with anti-SLAPP penalties from the company they were threatening. Hopefully, this ends up being a very costly bout of stupidity making the company think twice about doing it again.
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Their job? Their job is to make money. Sometimes fixing large scale problems costs money. I guess threating with a law suit is actually closer to "doing their job" than you think.
Reputation have an impact on the job of making money. So does ethics.
Perhaps one day failing companies will pull their head out of their lawyers ass and realize that.
FTA: The Researchers first met with PwC in August about this vulnerability. The Advisory was released December 7th. September...October...November... yep. That's three full months since the initial meeting with the only correspondence given by PwC is a series of C&Ds. Not even a "Please don't disclose this yet, we need more time to fix."... I only see this as PwC are the assholes in the equation. Also, second link in the summary is the full advisory without the need for contact info.
According to the advisory itself: 19.08.2016 PwC contacted 22.08.2016 Meeting with PwC, informed them about the impact and the details of the vulnerability and responsible disclosure 05.09.2016 Asked PwC about updates and whether a patch is available 13.09.2016 Received a Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers 18.11.2016 Informed that 90 days have passed and ESNC is planning to release a security advisory; asked for any details PwC can share about this matter including risk, affected versions, how to obtain a patch 22.11.2016 Received another Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers 07.12.2016 Public disclosure
...are laywers cheaper than developers?
Or is the Higher Management unable to think in any other way because they are only laywers themselves??
I worked for a tech firm that was run by a lawyer; when the shit hit the fan during the dotcom meltdown, we found out the only ass that was covered was his.
While we were scrambling to find new jobs & pay bills, he went off to head up some board filled with other cunts like himself
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
It is apparently some sort of big accounting firm.
They need a license to *use* it. Research is fair use, so go suck Walt Disney's mummified cock.
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.
dates too hard to read; stopped trying
You wouldn't be American by any chance would you? Just to help you out I've provided a translation for you.
8/19/2016 PwC contacted
8/22/2016 Meeting with PwC, informed them about the impact and the details
of the vulnerability and responsible disclosure
9/5/2016 Asked PwC about updates and whether a patch is available
9/13/2016 Received a Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers
11/18/2016 Informed that 90 days have passed and ESNC is planning to
release a security advisory; asked for any details PwC can share about this
matter including risk, affected versions, how to obtain a patch
11/22/2016 Received another Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers
12/7/12.2016 Public disclosure
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
There is probably a conscientious developer that wanted to work on this the day it was discovered but the company thought the cheaper track was to bury it, and now he's probably going to be fired and implicated as the reason the bug existed, or worse, wasn't patched.
Fixed it for you:
2016-8-19 PwC contacted
2016-8-22 Meeting with PwC, informed them about the impact and the details
of the vulnerability and responsible disclosure
2016-9-5 Asked PwC about updates and whether a patch is available
2016-9-13 Received a Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers
2016-11-18 Informed that 90 days have passed and ESNC is planning to
release a security advisory; asked for any details PwC can share about this
matter including risk, affected versions, how to obtain a patch
2016-11-22 Received another Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers
2016-12-7 Public disclosure
Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1179/
So it's pencil pushers vs. pen testers
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
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.
There's a strong motivation to test a competing security company's products and find defects. Certainly something great to point out in a sales call. But I don't see why this is bad. If you're a security company, you should expect this. It's not just your competitors who are going to be looking hard. It's everybody. In this case a competitor disclosed responsibly. I don't think you can get a better outcome. Don't like it? Well first fix your flaw and then return the favor by helping audit your competitor's product!
Actually fixed it for you:
2016-08-19 PwC contacted
2016-08-22 Meeting with PwC, informed them about the impact and the details
of the vulnerability and responsible disclosure
2016-09-05 Asked PwC about updates and whether a patch is available
2016-09-13 Received a Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers
2016-11-18 Informed that 90 days have passed and ESNC is planning to
release a security advisory; asked for any details PwC can share about this
matter including risk, affected versions, how to obtain a patch
2016-11-22 Received another Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers
2016-12-07 Public disclosure
Nope, no sig
I love the responses PWC gave.
"ESNC did not receive authorized access or a license to use this software. The software is not publicly available and was only properly accessed by those with licenses, such as PwC clients working with trained PwC staff,"
In other words trying t discredit them. There is nothing in that about the flaw not being real.
But the one that had me laughing at the spin was:
"The code referenced in this bulletin is not included in the current version of the software which is available to all of our clients."
Makes it sounds like it's an old version that wasn't in use much anymore. But it was announced AFTER the fix. So publish the fix, which is now the "current version of the software" and since it's published "is available to all of our clients.". But really, that doesn't mean that most of your clients are running the patch, it silently sidesteps the whole thing.
And the final one:
"The bulletin describes a hypothetical and unlikely scenario -- we are not aware of any situation in which it has materialized,"
Yes, I would expect access to an admin account not to be listed on the main menu, I can believe it's an unlikely scenario. It's not actually hypothetical if it's been done by the security firm, so that part is a lie. The "we are not aware of any situation in which it has materialized" just means "we didn't catch it".
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
This is Slashdot. Really fixed it for you.
1471593600 PwC contacted
1471852800 Meeting with PwC, informed them about the impact and the details
of the vulnerability and responsible disclosure
1473062400 Asked PwC about updates and whether a patch is available
1473753600 Received a Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers
1479456000 Informed that 90 days have passed and ESNC is planning to
release a security advisory; asked for any details PwC can share about this
matter including risk, affected versions, how to obtain a patch
1479801600 Received another Cease & Desist letter from PwC lawyers
1481097600 Public disclosure