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Yes! Yes! and Yes!

Facebook offers a bug bounty program, use it! I just did and got paid $2000 this month for reporting a crypto related flaw. The thing is, if a company offers a bounty program and you choose to go around it and publicly disclose you are sort of a jerk and to more than just the company. Another researcher had already found and reported the bug. Facebook was already working on a fix. The researcher was likely waiting for the terms of the bug bounty program to be met so they could then publish and spin it into a Black Hat, DEF CON, CanSec talk, then this kid comes along and takes the thunder. That's a real dick move.




> Facebook offers a bug bounty program, use it!

How is this a bug? It's a feature of FB Messenger! He didn't have to exploit any bugs to get at the data. He just took what FB gave him and displayed it on a map. Why would this be eligible for a bug bounty?


Yes, the college student is the real dick here...

As others have mentioned, the security issue the student highlighted was a known issue.

I think going through official channels is the right thing to do for mission critical zero day type of vulnerabilities.

Bringing increased attention to a known, unfixed, issue, doesn't seem like a jerk move to me.




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