An Invitation to Security Researchers

Every company says they take security "very seriously." Rather than bore anyone with banal boilerplate, here are some quick answers followed by detailed elaboration. If you have any questions about our policies, please email them to scott@paragonie.com.

Quick Answers

• There is no compulsion to disclose vulnerabilities privately, but we appreciate a head's up.
• `security@paragonie.com` will get your reports to the right person. Our GPG fingerprint, should you decide to encrypt your report, is `7F52 D5C6 1D12 55C7 3136 2E82 6B97 A1C2 8264 04DA`.
• YES, we will reward security researchers who disclose vulnerabilities in our software.
• In most cases, No Proof-of-Concept Required.

How to Report a Security Bug to Paragon Initiative Enterprises

There is no compulsion to disclose privately.

We believe vulnerability disclosure style is a personal choice and enjoy working with a diverse community. We understand and appreciate the importance of Full Disclosure in the history and practice of security research.

We would like to know about high-severity bugs before they become public knowledge, so we can fix them in a timely manner, but we do not believe in threatening researchers or trying to enforce vulnerability embargoes.

Ultimately, if you discover a security-affecting vulnerability, what you do with it is your choice. We would like to work with people, and to celebrate and reward their skill, experience, and dedication. We appreciate being informed of our mistakes so we can learn from them and build a better product. Our goal is to empower the community.

Where to Send Security Vulnerabilities

Our security email address is security@paragonie.com. Also feel free to open a new issue on Github if you want to disclose publicly.

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We Will Reward Security Researchers

This process has not been formalized; nor have dollar amounts been discussed.

However, if you report a valid security-affecting bug, we will compensate you for the time spent finding the vulnerability and reward you for being a good neighbor.

What does a "valid" bug mean?

There are two sides to this:

1. Some have spammed projects with invalid bug reports hoping to collect bounties for pressing a button and running an automated analysis tool. This is not cool.
2. There is a potential for the developers of a project to declare all security bug reports as invalid to save money.

Our team members have an established history of reporting vulnerabilities to large open source projects. We aren't in the business of ripping people off. When in doubt, our policy is to err on the side of generosity.

No Proof-of-Concept Required

We might ask for one if we feel we do not understand some of the details pertaining to a specific vulnerability. We certainly appreciate them if you include them in your report, but we believe the burden lies with the developer to prove their software is secure rather than with the researcher to prove that it isn't.

In our experience, most bugs are simpler to fix than they are to exploit.