From: Robin Wood (dninja@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 05 2006 - 07:39:23 EDT
Hi
That is the kind of thing I thought would be the case.
You can use your digression for mild issues but for anything serious
neither NDAs, contracts or anything similar should stop you from
reporting the incident.
Robin
On 6/5/06, Craig Wright <cwright@bdosyd.com.au> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> Actually, not reporting an offence may be an offence. Some examples
> include"
>
> Failure to report computer child porn is an offense in most countries.
>
> Reporting provisions under the US Patriot Act are just a start in the
> US.
>
> Reporting provisions in cases of material fraud apply in most countries
>
> Provisions for not reporting under the Cybercrime Act 2001 (Cwlth), and
> the provisions covering - computer-related forgery for example apply in
> Australia.
>
> There is the UK "Duties to Report and the Proceeds Of Crime Act 2002"
> "Section 330 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 - Failure to disclose"
>
> In France there are offences that specifically punish failures to
> report, namely Articles 434-1, 434-2 and 434-3.
>
> Contracts do not allow privity in cases where the act is illegal. You
> can not exclude liability for not reporting a crime. You can agree
> procedures. "By choosing to carry out a profession, the individual is
> assumed to have chosen the responsibilities and duties that come with
> it" (Dr Rachael Stretch, Nottingham Trent University).
>
> So, "Unless there is immediate threat of danger to life or limb you do
> not report it to the police or anyone else" is not generally correct.
>
> Regards
> Craig
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dotzero [mailto:dotzero@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, 3 June 2006 10:16 AM
> To: Robin Wood
> Cc: pen-test@securityfocus.com
> Subject: Spam: Re: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test
>
> On 6/2/06, Robin Wood <dninja@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi
> > I was wondering the other day, what should I do if during a pen test I
> > found some illegal activity (internal, not from hackers) on the
> > network being tested. My initial
> > thought was report it to the police and let them sort it out but then
> > thought I suppose that depends on the activity taking place. One one
> > hand you could find a ftp site with a couple of movies on, the other
> > you could find a website full of child porn. The first may just need a
> > mention to the company IT staff, the second would definitely warrant
> > police attention.
> >
>
> This should have been specified in the initial contract. You report
> the issue in writing to the security contact (which may not be IT)
> that was designated in the contract at the start of the engagement. If
> it is by email you encrypt it using the public key of the security
> contact given to you at the initiation of the engagement. If you are
> not the contact person on your side then you report it up through
> channels to the engagement manager.
>
> Unless there is immediate threat of danger to life or limb you do not
> report it to the police or anyone else. My experience is that an NDA
> is normally signed prior to the start of the pentest. Hopefully you
> read what you signed. We review their NDA and have our attorney review
> it as well. They do the same for ours. Invariably it has been redlined
> by someone. That needs to get resolved. Believe me, people do get sued
> over these sorts of things.
>
> Consider the case of doing a pentest for a public company. You went to
> the police and reported something. It became public and a couple of
> hundred million dollars (or more) gets knocked off of their market
> capitalization. Even worse, you got something wrong in the information
> you gave and which was made public. You are begging to be sued....even
> if there wasn't an NDA. It's a tort.
>
> Also consider that you may be called as a witness (possibly as an
> expert witness) depending on the specifics of the situation. You do
> not want your footprints muddying the "scene". Every single thing that
> you did will be scrutinized by one side or the other. Your expertise
> may be publicly dragged through the mud in an effort to discredit you
> as an expert witness (or just a witness). Someone starts rattling off
> a question about some RFC or another or something obscure about packet
> headers. You may not know a particular detail without referring to the
> RFC.
>
> You want to be rock solid on what you are going to be asked about.
> Basically, at such and such a time during a contracted pentest we
> found XYZ which we believed to indicate possible illegal activity. We
> immediately stopped the pentest and reported it to the company
> security contact as designated in our agreement with them. Based on
> their response and instructions we then did blah blah blah (Whether
> that is stand down or they contracted us to investigate the
> matter...whatever).
>
> The more you follow a preset script the better you address potential
> liability and legal issues. One step (early) in that script should be
> to contact your legal advisor if only to make sure they will be
> available if needed on short notice.
>
> What if YOU are accused of some act as part of how it plays out? After
> all, you found the activity while engaged in the act of compromising
> their network and servers. You may have had proper permission but if
> it becomes a legal case you are fair game. You want to be squeaky
> clean.
>
> > Talking to someone they suggested the case where a web cam was being
> > used to watch women's toilets. Should that be reported to the company
> > first to stop the activity, then to the police, or could reporting it
> > to the company give the perpetrator time to clean up their activities.
> >
>
> Your obligation is to report it to the security contact designated by
> the company. Your job is not to stop the activity or prevent clean up.
> You have been engaged in a specific scope to provide professional
> services related to security in a very specific way.... a penetration
> test.
>
> > All this is just idle questions at the moment but I'm curious to see
> > if anyone has come across this kind of situation and how did they
> > dealt with it. As I'm in the UK I'm particularly interested in any UK
> > stories.
> >
>
> I've dealt with a couple situations like this. My approach was as
> indicated above. I was fortunate to have input from folks more
> experienced than I was at the time. My subsequent experience pretty
> much meshed with their advice.
>
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