$10,000 Security Bug Bounty for Certificate Verification

Daniel Veditz

2

Firefox developer builds (“Nightly“) are now using a new certificate verification library we’ve been working on for some time, and this code is on track to be released as part of Firefox 31 in July. As we’ve all been painfully reminded recently (Heartbleed, #gotofail) correct code in TLS libraries is crucial in today’s Internet and we want to make sure this code is rock solid before it ships to millions of Firefox users. To that end we’re excited to launch a special Security Bug Bounty program that will pay $10,000 for critical security flaws found and reported in this new code before the end of June.

To qualify for the special bounty the bug and reporter must first meet the guidelines of our normal security bug bounty program (first to file wins in case of duplicates, employees are not eligible, and so on). In addition, to qualify for the special bounty amount the vulnerability must:

  • be in, or caused by, code in security/pkix or security/certverifier as used in Firefox
  • be triggered through normal web browsing (for example “visit the attacker’s HTTPS site”)
  • be reported in enough detail, including testcases, certificates, or even a running proof of concept server, that we can reproduce the problem
  • be reported to us by 11:59pm June 30, 2014 (Pacific Daylight Time)

We are primarily interested in bugs that allow the construction of certificate chains that are accepted as valid when they should be rejected, and bugs in the new code that lead to exploitable memory corruption. Compatibility issues that cause Firefox to be unable to verify otherwise valid certificates will generally not be considered a security bug, but a bug that caused Firefox to accept forged signed OCSP responses would be.

Valid security bugs that don’t meet the specific parameters of this special program remain eligible for our usual $3000 Security Bug Bounty, of course.

To enter the program please file a security bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ and send the bug ID or link by mail to security@mozilla.org. If for some reason you cannot file a bug you can send all the details by email, but filing the bug yourself has a couple of advantages for you. First, you will automatically be involved in any discussions the developers have about your bug, and second, if there are multiple reports of the same vulnerability the earliest bug filed wins the bounty. If you wish to encrypt mail to us our key can be found at https://www.mozilla.org/security/#pgpkey.
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