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by effie 2518 days ago
Everybody, including researchers, has a duty to publish things responsibly and if necessary, withhold the publication. Despite the economical incentives, the moral responsibility is to research and harden systems, not to publish whatever and build a resume.

You can't just publish information harmful to public and say "well I'm a researcher, so I can do anything I want". Publishing instructions to bypass important security restrictions that people rely on is often harmful and may be even illegal in some countries, for good reason - to protect the people.

1 comments

Does this universal duty to work for free only concern security research?

>You can't just publish information harmful to public

It’s simply ridiculous to describe full disclosure like that.

I've heard some interesting arguments about publicly dropping 0days to make organisations pull their heads in - Places like Microsoft which historically weren't -great- at security 'deserved' it. I'm not saying that argument is right or wrong, but it was interesting nonetheless.

But dropping a 0day irresponsibly can lead to actual impact - what happens if a good person is persecuted, or executed because of the information you disclosed publicly? What about a hundred. Or a thousand?

I did not say duty to work for free, but duty to observe some restrictions and weighing positive/negative impacts of your publications on society if you choose to work in that domain.
Publicly dropping a bug is still better for the public than keeping it secret. Full disclosure is charity.