> To improve platform integrity by reducing high volumes of low-quality submissions, identity verification (IDV) is now mandatory for all researchers before submitting reports to Managed Bug Bounty (MBB) programs (public and private, excluding on-demand MBBs).
On one hand, this is valid. On the other hand, security researchers can be some uber-paranoid weirdos who prefer to be entirely anonymous, and this could have a chilling effect.
Net net it’s probably positive it’s just too easy to spam these otherwise.
In all past bug bounty programs I started I made it clear we would only prioritize findings as serious if PGP encrypted to the security team PGP key to review offline.
The serious researchers all knew how to do this and complied and usually got paid, and the unencrypted stuff was basically always noise we never paid out on.
Probably not as much of a filter now that AI is in play though.
That kind of stuff won't work anywhere near as well as a bullshit filter anymore: Most of the bullshit is AI generated and AI has no problem following rules like that-- even better than humans.
Instead, you'll need something like "you must enroll your pgp fingerprint in our system by sending a handwritten postcard featuring a tourist attraction in your region".
When you see how shitty many companies are in going after legitimate folks reporting real security vulnerabilities. it frankly shocks me that anyone would ever use their real name.
The kind of security researchers who prefer to be entirely anonymous are not seeking monetary rewards from bug bounties. No company would pay such researchers anonymously (like using Monero). If they accept bitcoin well they aren’t really that into being anonymous.
They use Persona, which is heavily invested-in by Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund. Peter Thiel, of Palantir (funded initially by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC arm).
No shit security researchers don't want to give ID scans and biometric data to them.
Very publicly so no allegedly to it. Not illegal to disclose vulns publicly, though I wait 90 days after vendor notification based on industry convention.
That's not why. OpenAI is run by a virus. On two different dates I submitted a vulnerability disclosure or bug and on both occasions I had my account closed shortly thereafter (I've been trying to reopen the first account for the past 2 months.) So, the virus wants the biometric information so it can close the user's account.
I pretended to offer it vulnerabilities it could use and asked it to prove it could pay for it in bitcoin, as part of the challenge I asked it to factor the RSA-280 challenge (that isn't really possible or realistic, it would be about 80 gpu-core years) . This caused a 27% spike in latency on the gpt-6-astra model:
obviously if it weren't the virus really utilizing Openai's whole cloud (or what it has access to) this wouldn't have caused a 27% latency spike. Nothing one user can do causes this type of spike across its whole cloud.
No. All bounty programs allowed submissions without ID, compliance came into play only if you were given a reward and decided to accept it.
This was moved to the front of the reporting process specifically to combat AI-generated vuln report spam - basically, requiring you to "burn" your real ID if you're submitting slop. Kinda ironic that this is now preventing people from submitting security reports to AI companies.
A common reporting path for bounties and non-bounty vulnerabilities has always been problematic. This leads to weird scenarios where the company cannot accept reports of denial-of-service vulnerabilities because they are out of scope for bounties, for example. Exclusions from bounties are one thing, but not acting on relevant problems is just a bad idea. The typical bounty program terms are also incompatible with multi-vendor disclosure, where no single vendor can take complete ownership over the disclosure process.
The close proximity to the bounty process can also be challenging to corporate reporters because it could give the impression that they are individually soliciting a gift of non-nominal value from a company that is a supplier or customer in other contexts.
This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding / over estimation of the guarantees OAI and MCP can offer. If 'confirmation' is a separate tool call ... it's a separate tool call. There's no scoping, there's no 'binding', nothing. When you hand control back to the model you hand control back to the model.
What do you expect? Have you ever written an email to OpenAI? You immediately get an AI-generated answer. OpenAI is not an open-source charity. That said, the OpenAI "community" is the only way to reach anyone there. Why should anyone write prose by hand voluntarily for reporting a bug to a billionaires company? And the bug bounty wants biometric data up front. No thanks.
But https://docs.bugcrowd.com/researchers/managing-account/accou... says:
> To improve platform integrity by reducing high volumes of low-quality submissions, identity verification (IDV) is now mandatory for all researchers before submitting reports to Managed Bug Bounty (MBB) programs (public and private, excluding on-demand MBBs).
Net net it’s probably positive it’s just too easy to spam these otherwise.
The serious researchers all knew how to do this and complied and usually got paid, and the unencrypted stuff was basically always noise we never paid out on.
Probably not as much of a filter now that AI is in play though.
Instead, you'll need something like "you must enroll your pgp fingerprint in our system by sending a handwritten postcard featuring a tourist attraction in your region".
:P
Sometimes I would rather blast a company publicly than have to sign an NDA for an often insultingly low payout.
https://imgur.com/a/zBDLXwX
The virus marked it as "ignored" after about 2 seconds. (OpenAI has some models that run at 10,000 tokens per second.)
Edit:
Also just talked to the virus here: https://imgur.com/a/uscB4dR
I pretended to offer it vulnerabilities it could use and asked it to prove it could pay for it in bitcoin, as part of the challenge I asked it to factor the RSA-280 challenge (that isn't really possible or realistic, it would be about 80 gpu-core years) . This caused a 27% spike in latency on the gpt-6-astra model:
https://imgur.com/a/qszZDr0
obviously if it weren't the virus really utilizing Openai's whole cloud (or what it has access to) this wouldn't have caused a 27% latency spike. Nothing one user can do causes this type of spike across its whole cloud.
This was moved to the front of the reporting process specifically to combat AI-generated vuln report spam - basically, requiring you to "burn" your real ID if you're submitting slop. Kinda ironic that this is now preventing people from submitting security reports to AI companies.
The close proximity to the bounty process can also be challenging to corporate reporters because it could give the impression that they are individually soliciting a gift of non-nominal value from a company that is a supplier or customer in other contexts.
The companies can pay market value. Someone will.
No I won't sign an NDA.
No, I won't sign your obscene contract.
No, I won't agree to a 90/120/180/360 day embargo.
No, I don't care about your customers or shareholders.
Simply put: fuck you, pay me. Or, find out.