Posts Tagged: Black Hat

A Little Sunshine / Other — 14 Comments
13
Dec 11

Bugs Money

Talk about geek chic. Facebook has started paying researchers who find and report security bugs by issuing them custom branded “White Hat” debit cards that can be reloaded with funds each time the researchers discover new flaws.

Facebook's Bug Bounty debit card for security researchers who report security flaws in its site and applications.

I first read about this card on the Polish IT security portal Niebezpiecznik.pl, which recently published an image of a bug bounty card given to Szymon Gruszecki, a Polish security researcher and penetration tester. A sucker for most things credit/debit card related, I wanted to hear more from researchers who’d received the cards.

Like many participants in Facebook’s program, Gruszecki also is hunting bugs for other companies that offer researchers money in exchange for privately reporting vulnerabilities, including Google, Mozilla, CCBill and Piwik. That’s not to say he only finds bugs for money.

“I regularly report Web app vulnerabilities to various companies [that don't offer bounties], including Microsoft, Apple, etc.,” Gruszecki wrote in an email exchange.

The bug bounty programs are a clever way for Internet-based companies to simultaneously generate goodwill within the security community and to convince researchers to report bugs privately. Researchers are rewarded if their bugs can be confirmed, and if they give the affected companies time to fix the flaws before going public with the information.

As an added bonus, some researchers — like Gruszecki — choose not to disclose the bugs at all.

Continue reading →

Time to Patch — 12 Comments
19
Aug 10

Adobe Issues Acrobat, Reader Security Patches

Adobe Systems Inc. today issued software updates to fix at least two security vulnerabilities in its widely-used Acrobat and PDF Reader products. Updates are available for Windows, Mac and UNIX versions of these programs.

Acrobat and Reader users can update to the latest version, v. 9.3.4, using the built-in updater, by clicking “Help” and then “Check for Updates.”

Today’s update is an out-of-cycle release for Adobe, which recently moved to a quarterly patch release schedule. The company said the update addresses a vulnerability that was demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas last month. The release notes also reference a flaw detailed by researcher Didier Stevens back in March. Adobe said it is not aware of any active attacks that are exploiting either of these bugs.

More information on these patches, such as updating older versions of Acrobat and Reader, is available in the Adobe security advisory.