Penetration Testing mailing list archives
RE: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test
From: "Andy Meyers" <andy.meyers () hushmail com>
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 21:03:38 -0700
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I agree with a lot of what dotzero said. But what comes to my mind are two other additional things I don't think he mentioned (one is an opinion). 1. The country or local applicable laws. 2. Ethics: is it pirated software, child porn or terrorist plans? If it's the latter of the two I would report it since this has to deal with personal harm or deals with an underage person. - ----------- Ashes PGP: http://ashesbelow.ath.cx/public.txt - -----Original Message----- From: Dotzero [mailto:dotzero () gmail com] Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 5:16 PM To: Robin Wood Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com Subject: 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. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -- This List Sponsored by: Cenzic Concerned about Web Application Security? Why not go with the #1 solution - Cenzic, the only one to win the Analyst's Choice Award from eWeek. As attacks through web applications continue to rise, you need to proactively protect your applications from hackers. Cenzic has the most comprehensive solutions to meet your application security penetration testing and vulnerability management needs. You have an option to go with a managed service (Cenzic ClickToSecure) or an enterprise software (Cenzic Hailstorm). Download FREE whitepaper on how a managed service can help you: http://www.cenzic.com/news_events/wpappsec.php And, now for a limited time we can do a FREE audit for you to confirm your results from other product. Contact us at request () cenzic com for details. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Note: This signature can be verified at https://www.hushtools.com/verify/ Version: Hush 2.5 Charset: UTF8 wkYEARECAAYFAkSBChkACgkQnZu7yPmLRpB7sgCgsgMsbzgo63MM3mUuMHF1ejAkq6UA n1FIurmR8cw9jawk5vpEr2JSUS8V =D2Rr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This List Sponsored by: Cenzic Concerned about Web Application Security? Why not go with the #1 solution - Cenzic, the only one to win the Analyst's Choice Award from eWeek. As attacks through web applications continue to rise, you need to proactively protect your applications from hackers. Cenzic has the most comprehensive solutions to meet your application security penetration testing and vulnerability management needs. You have an option to go with a managed service (Cenzic ClickToSecure) or an enterprise software (Cenzic Hailstorm). Download FREE whitepaper on how a managed service can help you: http://www.cenzic.com/news_events/wpappsec.php And, now for a limited time we can do a FREE audit for you to confirm your results from other product. Contact us at request () cenzic com for details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current thread:
- what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Robin Wood (Jun 02)
- Re: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Dotzero (Jun 02)
- RE: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Andy Meyers (Jun 02)
- RE: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Ali-Reza Anghaie (Jun 03)
- Re: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Robin Wood (Jun 04)
- RE: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Ebeling, Jr., Herman Frederick (Jun 07)
- RE: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Andy Meyers (Jun 02)
- Re: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Paul Robertson (Jun 08)
- RE: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Campbell Murray (Jun 09)
- Re: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Robin Wood (Jun 10)
- Re: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Paul Robertson (Jun 14)
- RE: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Campbell Murray (Jun 09)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Michael Scheidell (Jun 02)
- Re: what to do it illegal activity found during pen-test Dotzero (Jun 02)