Sure, they have no legal obligation to disclose, but we all also have no legal obligation to buy their services. Blacklisting bad actors like this is the right move to discourage this kind of behavior.
they did a proper coordinated disclosure, following the industry standard 90+30 process. that is why the exploit dropped 30 days after the patch landed.
the kernel team should have communicated with their downstream about the importance of the patch. that is the kernel security team's responsibility -- and they are much better positioned to do that than crossing your fingers and hoping every reporter will contact every distro every single time there is a vulnerability.
there are very good reasons disclosure works this way, backed by a couple of decades of debate about it.
I just don't see the point in complaining about how shirking the norms of your industry will make you look irresponsible. I don't really care that they could have decided to sell the vulnerability instead. It isn't material.
Tavis Ormandy dropped Zenbleed right onto Twitter. He's doing fine. You can blacklist him if you want; I imagine he's not going to notice.
There is actually no way to give them a friendly heads up, and then do your own thing. The only way not to be bound is by not sending them any notification at all...
I couldn't find a public copy of that.
The best starting point I found for reporting vulnerabilities was: https://github.com/microsoft/MSRC-Security-Research/security...
You can email without agreeing to anything. But for a serious issue Microsoft would obviously try and track down who you are and what jurisdiction you are in.
> MICROSOFT BOUNTY TERMS & CONDITIONS
> Last updated: July 23, 2025
> The Microsoft Bug Bounty Programs Terms and Conditions ("Terms") cover your participation in the Microsoft Bug Bounty Program (the "Program"). These Terms are between you and Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft," "us" or "we"). By submitting any vulnerabilities to Microsoft or otherwise participating in the Program in any manner, you accept these Terms.
Who knows if its enforceable.
Those private actors aren't planning to sit around and hold onto these exploits they've horded forevermore, they're obviously paying for them so they can one day use them.
We must get public funds to reward ethical disclosure of big impact vulns like this.
Mostly cover citizens within a very limited set of jurisdictions.
Otherwise there's a chance at extradition.
This is not true in many jurisdictions.
We need an anonymous bounty system.
If so, that's a bit naive. In the actual world, that buyer wants to buy more stuff from me, not penalize me.
And they absolutely have a moral obligation to do things in a way to minimize damage and impact to other people's systems. (I'm not saying "responsible disclosure" is the correct way to do that, but hoarding vulnerabilities and exploits and selling them to the highest bidder certainly isn't.)
This is how society needs to work.
Or at least went dark ..
You'll learn who the buyers are if you routinely have the really good stuff to sell! If you are offering iOS zero click on a semi-regular basis, the buyer is going to want to try to deal with you directly and preferably offer you a more regular form of employment, if you are interested. Some national governments may offer certain benefits to you, depending on your situation.
All depends on what you have to offer. If you were able to offer this https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/09/microsofts-entra-id... or something of that magnitude, a lot of problems in your life would just go away. The buyers would all be Five Eyes and the intelligence gain of having that kind of access even briefly is priceless.
In a more Western-centric context, imagine if you had a flaw like that, same 'no logs are generated' and 'every single customer account is accessible' but the impacted vendor was Alibaba Cloud. The researcher would get to name their price. That's the real world, that's the world we share. We shouldn't be blind to that.
it wasn't sold for profit, it was openly disclosed.
> And they absolutely have a moral obligation to do things in a way to minimize damage and impact to other people's systems.
All that "responsible disclosure" does is keep people from demanding better.
Uh... no? If you mean legally, some people might, depending on jurisdiction. But also, ethically? yes, researchers are ethically obligated to disclose responsibly.
> Just fyi.
...
> Be glad it was disclosed at all. Be glad a patch was available prior to release.
I am glad that a patch was available. Equally I can be glad that the linux community is strong enough to respond quickly, while also being angry that this person behaves unethically.
Likewise, when people in my industry behave poorly, or unethically; I'm now the person ethically obligated to both point it out, and condemn it. Not to become an apologist demanding I should be happy watching bad things happen, when much of the fallout could have been prevented with a bit less incompetence and ignorance.
I'm so glad these so called "researchers" aren't totally evil, I'm so grateful they're only half evil, give them a lollipop.
Whatever, the way they disclosed it isn't much different from no disclosure at all - the exploit would have been identified in the wild and fixed soon thereafter.
"Researchers"...
non-security people always seem to get up in arms about it, but there is very good reasons why the industry has landed on the process it has, which has been hashed out over a few decades.
1. Status quo. Researchers are free to disclose to a vendor, free to sell vulns to legitimate companies, free to do full disclosure if they want. This situation benefits security. Researchers are able to pay their bills while also doing meaningful research into OSS projects that are unable to fund the kind of security audit they need. Harm reduction, of sorts.
2. Everyone is a bad actor. No one is going to do this work for free/for a bounty. Horrible flaws will be found and shared with ransomware gangs and the like. 0day will sell for a percentage of the ransom winnings. Researchers will live like kings, everyone else will suffer.
Which do you prefer?
If it won’t be handled through criminal law then it’ll be handled through civil litigation: Anyone who was exploited as a result of this disclosure should sue the discloser for contributing to the damage they’ve suffered.