[nmjohn]

> What about the non-issues that are reported with complicated conditions but don't actually work? Just because you can throw out the obviously bad items doesn't mean the rest are real.

Yes. There will be some which don't fit into the overly simplistic categories I provided.

However in what I've seen the complicated condition requiring reports which turn out to not actually be bugs are rare enough where they aren't relevant to the discussion.

> Exploiting it is rather different from selling it, though, right? And since a vuln in a website can literally be closed immediately, and PayPal's got whole divisions dedicated to preventing and undoing the damage you can do even with "account takeover", it'd be rather much a risk to pay someone cash for a vulnerability. At the first slip, the value drops to $0. Plus all the issues of verifying the bug and establishing trust for both parties. Seems rather difficult.

You are hung up on what was an arbitrary example.

My point simply is if the reward for serious vulnerabilities is orders of magnitude higher if the researchers chooses the black hat instead of the white one - the overall result is a huge net negative for the world.

[MichaelGG]

The arbitrary example is a good one though, because it nicely illustrates why a bug in a website just isn't worth a whole lot to sell. No matter what the issue, from a PayPal account issue to a Facebook privacy bypass, the ops teams are monitoring for this kinda thing and will shut it down quick.

Do you have first hand knowledge of selling such an exploit?