alt Hacker NewsI can't think of a business process that accepts and monetizes pin-compatible XSS vulnerabilities.
But for RCE, there's lots of them! RCE vulnerabilities slot into CNE implants, botnets, ransomware rigs, and organized identity theft.
The key thing here is that these businesses already exist. There are already people in the market for the vulnerabilities. If you just imagine a new business driven by XSS vulnerabilities, that doesn't create customers, any more than imagining a new kind of cloud service instantly gets you funded for one.
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How does stealing someone social media accounts not slot into "organized identity theft"?
... actually: how is XSS not a form of RCE? The script is code; it's executed on the victim's machine; it arrives remotely from the untrusted, attacker-controlled source.
And with the legitimate first-party's permissions and access, at that. It has access to things within the browser's sandbox that it probably really shouldn't. Imagine if a bank had used Mintlify or something similar to implement a customer service portal, for example.
Thank you, makes a lot of sense.
I wonder what you think of this, re: the disparity between the economics you just laid out and the "companies are such fkn misers!" comments that always arise in these threads on bounty payouts...
I've seen first hand how companies devalue investment in security -- after all, it's an insurance policy whose main beneficiaries are their customers. Sure it's also reputational insurance in theory, but what is that compared with showing more profit this quarter, or using the money for growth if you're a startup, etc. Basically, the economic incentives are to foist the risks onto your customers and gamble that a huge incident won't sink you.
I wonder if that background calculus -- which is broadly accurate, imo -- is what rankles people about the low bounty rewards, especially from companies that could afford more?