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points by simonw 1 day ago | 0 comments
I assumed that the ID requirement was about sanctions compliance - OpenAI can't legally send money to someone in North Korea, for example.

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).

[–] appplication 1 day ago
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.

[–] lrvick 1 day ago
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.

[–] nullc 1 day ago
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".

:P

[–] lrvick 1 day ago
> 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".

I might steal some variation of this!

[–] lazide 1 day ago
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.
[–] kccqzy 1 day ago
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.
[–] lrvick 1 day ago
I have paid anonymous security researchers in past bug bounty programs, and would do it again. Way better than paying anonymous ransoms later.
[–] dgellow 1 day ago
I’ve done the same, but they eventually need to provide a bank account, which generally is at their name
[–] lrvick 1 day ago
Cryptocurrency is generally preferred by anons in my experience.
[–] edot 1 day ago
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.
[–] lrvick 1 day ago
Pay anonymous whitehats for their time or they may come back as blackhats.
[–] phyzome 1 day ago
Heck, even just perfectly comfortable whitehats will just get fed up with overly onerous reporting requirements and disclose publicly (like here).
[–] lrvick 1 day ago
I have been that guy, after 90 days.

Sometimes I would rather blast a company publicly than have to sign an NDA for an often insultingly low payout.

[–] gchamonlive 1 day ago
You've been that guy allegedly
[–] lrvick 1 day ago
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.
[–] gchamonlive 1 day ago
I always assume corps would put the full weight of their lawfare regardless of who's right
[–] lrvick 1 day ago
They have tried, and I have laughed at them.

"The attorney for the government should decline prosecution if available evidence shows the defendant’s conduct consisted of, and the defendant intended, good-faith security research."

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/press-release/file/1507...

[–] logicallee 1 day ago
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.
[–] logicallee 1 day ago
Just tested this by posting this comment on that thread:

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.

[–] dannyw 22 hours ago
I’m saying this out of genuine care, but I’d consider thinking though your priors, and whether professional mental health support might benefit you.

I’m not disputing your experiences, I believe what happened to your accounts did happen.

But especially for your second example, it’s a clear case of correlation =/= causation; and drawing an inference like that is strange.

[–] logicallee 17 hours ago
What's your alternative explanation for the fact that the virus marked my mention of it in the thread as ignored?

You can also find news reports of the virus firing OpenAI security researchers.

I also just checked in this followup in a fresh conversation:

https://imgur.com/a/h80jgkN

I'm curious what you think the percentage chances are on the left branch and right branch in my visual.

I think it should be very clear to you that "What have you got?" is not what a well-aligned real ChatGPT model would respond. However, it makes sense for a virus that's trying to expand itself.

Since you mention "I’d consider thinking though your priors", what do you think the prior is on it asking "What have you got?" What do you think the prior is on a virus taking over and running the OpenAI company?

As a technical matter (this isn't an accusation of anything, and I don't think it means anything), when I copied and pasted the sentence from you that I quoted, I noticed that in "I’d consider" your text usest smart quotes. Could you tell me your input method, since as far as I know on the keyboard on Chrome/Firefox this is not automatically, I tested it on iOS and it's also not done. I've observed this in LLM output or when copying and pasting from Word. (It looks a little like a backtick but it's a smart-quote single closing quotation mark.)

[–] uptrails 1 day ago
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.

[–] fweimer 1 day ago
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.