&gt;At this point, it was reasonable to believe that Wes was operating on behalf of Synack. His account on our portal mentions Synack as his affiliation, he has interacted with us using a synack.com email address, and he has written blog posts that are used by Synack for marketing purposes.<p>This is pretty questionable, and seems more like a hastily made up excuse. If Alex wasn&#x27;t acting with malicious intent then the logical approach would&#x27;ve been to ask the researcher if he&#x27;s operating on behalf of synack.