Scope and Rules of Engagement

Rules of Engagement

  • No Denial of Service testing
  • No Physical or Social Engineering
  • No testing of Third-party Services
  • No uploading of any vulnerability or client-related content to third-party utilities (e.g. Github, DropBox, YouTube)
  • All attack payload data must use professional language
  • If able to gain access to a system, accounts, users, or user data, stop at point of recognition and report. Do not dive deeper to determine how much more is accessible.
  • Vulnerabilities submitted through this process are considered confidential, and should not be discussed or disclosed until approved by all parties involved.

Low Impact Vulnerabilities - Out of Scope

The following vulnerabilities are considered too low of an impact to the client and would be marked as Out of Scope if submitted:

  • Google Maps API Keys
  • Account/e-mail enumeration using brute-force attacks
    • Valid user account/email enumeration not requiring brute-force will be considered
  • Any low impact issues related to session management (i.e. concurrent sessions, session expiration, password reset/change log out, etc.)
  • Bypassing content restrictions in uploading a file without proving the file was received
  • Clickjacking/UI redressing
  • Client-side application/browser autocomplete or saved password/credentials
  • Descriptive or verbose error pages without proof of exploitability or obtaining sensitive information
  • Directory structure enumeration (unless the fact reveals exceptionally useful information)
  • Incomplete or missing SPF/DMARC/DKIM records
  • Issues related to password/credential strength, length, lockouts, or lack of brute-force/rate-limiting protections
    • Account compromises (especially admin) as a result of these issues will likely be considered VALID
  • Lack of SSL or Mixed content
    • Leaking Session Cookies, User Credentials, or other sensitive data will be reviewed on a case by case basis
    • If leaking of sensitive data requires MiTM positioning to exploit, it will be considered out of scope
  • Login/Logout/Unauthenticated/Low-impact CSRF
    • CSRF Vulnerabilities may be acceptable if they are of higher impact. Examples of low impact CSRF include: Add/Delete from Cart, Add/remove wishlist/favorites, Nonsevere preference options, etc.
  • Low impact Information disclosures (including Software version disclosure)
  • Missing Cookie flags
  • Missing/Enabled HTTP Headers/Methods which do not lead directly to a security vulnerability
  • Reflected file download attacks (RFD)
  • Self-exploitation (i.e. password reset links or cookie reuse)
  • SSL/TLS best practices that do not contain a fully functional proof of concept
  • URL/Open Redirection
  • Use of a known-vulnerable library which leads to a low-impact vulnerability (i.e. jQuery outdated version leads to low impact XSS)
  • Valid bugs or best practice issues that are not directly related to the security posture of the client
  • Vulnerabilities affecting users of outdated browsers, plugins or platforms
  • Vulnerabilities that allow for the injection of arbitrary text without allowing for hyperlinks, HTML, or JavaScript code to be injected
  • Vulnerabilities that require the user/victim to perform extremely unlikely actions (i.e. Self-XSS)
    • Self-XSS for a Persistent/Stored XSS will be considered. The only circumstances under which we will not require proof of impact to multiple users is for Persistent/Stored XSS in cases where only one set of credentials is available to the researcher and other users cannot be tested. We will require documentation or evidence reasonably proving the functionality is available to other users/backend team/admin for the report to be considered.
    • Any type of XSS that requires a victim to press an unlikely key combination is NOT in scope (i.e. alt+shift+x for payload execution)

Additional specific vulnerability types considered out of scope due to low impact:

  • IIS Tilde File and Directory Disclosure
  • SSH Username Enumeration
  • Wordpress Username Enumeration
  • SSL Weak Ciphers/ POODLE / Heartbleed
  • CSV Injection
  • PHP Info
  • Server-Status if it does not reveal sensitive information
  • Snoop Info Disclosures
  • Paywall bypass vectors
  • CSRF on forms that are available to anonymous users
  • Vulnerabilities in 3rd party services used by NYTCO
  • Subdomain takeover
  • Debug information exposure
  • Descriptive error messages
  • Cookie expiration
  • Cookie migration/sharing
  • Static content over HTTP
  • Free trials / Paywall bypass
  • Same Site Scripting
  • Resource Exhaustion attacks
  • Issues related to rate limiting
  • Services listening on port 80
  • Internal IP address disclosure
  • Crossdomain policies for software such as flash, silverlight etc. w/o evidence of an exploitability
  • Weak password policies
  • Weak Captcha / Captcha bypass
  • Vulnerabilities impacting only old/end-of-life browsers/plugins including:
    • Issues that have had a patch available from the vendor for at least 6 months
    • Issues on software that is no longer maintained
  • Banner disclosure of web servers, services, frameworks, or other common services
  • Vulnerabilities that require excessive user interaction or unreasonable actions