Disclosing Vulnerabilities: How to Avoid Becoming The Next Data Breach Headline!

When it comes to disclosing vulnerabilities to enterprise companies, they seem to prefer the “hear, speak, see no evil” strategy, and the conversation often ends up looks something like this:

Me: Hey, we found a vulnerability on your site, wanted to let you know so you can fix it.
You: Cool thanks for letting us know, but we’re going to try to sue you for telling us.
Me: ???

You can see how this would discourage those who find vulnerabilities from disclosing them to enterprise companies, however, if we take a look at some of the major data breaches that have happened over the last few years, you can see how there is a need to encourage transparency in order to address vulnerabilities, rather than ignoring them or even threatening those who bring them to light. 

For example, you may have heard about Panera Bread leaking millions of customers’ data, recently. It’s a story that is depressingly familiar: the initial report of the vulnerability was dismissed as a scam, then it was ignored, then “fixed” by a token patch that did little to actually prevent the data from being exposed. For at least eight months, nearly 37 million Panera Bread customers had their data exposed for anyone to collect.

Why does this happen? Why do companies have such a visceral reaction when this kind of news is presented to them? We have seen similar reactions when we have disclosed vulnerabilities to large enterprise companies (some very well known)! After one particular disclosure, we even got threatened with a lawsuit for letting a company know they had a vulnerability, even though we helped them by providing a suggestion on how they can fix it.

Let’s be clear here, even if a company is not a current customer, we reach out to them immediately after finding a vulnerability to let them know, so they can get the issue fixed. All too often, however, we get treated with hostility and anger: “How dare you tell us we have a problem!”.

This is a very dangerous mindset and culture that seems to exist at the leadership level of some of these companies.

So how can we change this?

It has to start at the top. CISOs need to adopt a better mindset and culture around handling incoming help. Yes, some people may use it as a sales tactic, but it does not negate the fact that the vulnerability is there. All disclosures should be taken seriously and, dare we say, welcomed.

Some companies are great; they even have bug bounty programs that offer rewards to an individual for finding issues for them. Here at Tinfoil, we see it as our obligation to be good stewards of the community and always share any potential threats regardless of whether the target is a current customer, and with no obligation to become one. We just want you to have safe and secure applications! Why? Because chances are, you hold the personal data of some of our team members and customers.

Tinfoil Security has decided to start a campaign every time there is an avoidable breach with the #UseTinfoil that will be applied when we know a tool like ours could’ve been used to avoid your data from falling into the wrong hands!

Peter Ludlum
