Vulnerability Disclosure Policy

Introduction

The Presidio Trust is committed to ensuring the security of the American public by protecting their information. This policy is intended to give security researchers clear guidelines for conducting vulnerability disclosure activities and to convey our preferences for how to submit discovered vulnerabilities to us.

This policy describes what systems and types of research are covered under this policy, how to send vulnerability reports to the Presidio Trust, and how long the Presidio Trust asks security researchers to wait before publicly disclosing vulnerabilities.

The Presidio Trust encourages security researchers to report vulnerabilities they’ve discovered – as set out in this policy – so we can fix them. We have developed this policy to reflect our values and uphold our sense of responsibility to security researchers who share their expertise with us in good faith.

Scope

This policy applies to systems and services directly within the following domains:

• PresidioTunnelTops.gov
• *.PresidioTunnelTops.gov

Any service not expressly listed above, such as any connected services, are excluded from scope and are not authorized for testing. Though we develop and maintain other Internet-accessible systems or services, we ask that active research and testing be only conducted on the systems and services covered by the scope of this document.

Vulnerabilities found in non-federal systems from our vendors fall outside of this policy’s scope and should be reported directly to the vendor according to their disclosure policy (if any).

If you aren’t sure whether a system is in scope or not, contact us via email at the Security Contact for the system’s domain listed in the .gov WHOIS database before starting your research.

If there is a particular system not in scope that you think merits testing, please contact us to discuss it first. We will increase the scope of this policy over time.

Authorization

If you comply with this policy during your security research, we will consider your research to be authorized. We will work with you to understand and resolve the issue quickly.

Unauthorized Test Methods

The following methods are not authorized:

• Network denial of service (DoS or DDoS) tests or other tests that impair access to or damage a system or data
• Physical testing (e.g. office access, open doors, tailgating), social engineering (e.g. phishing, vishing), or any other non-technical vulnerability testing

Guidelines

Under this policy, “research” means activities in which you:

• Notify us as soon as possible after you discover a real or potential security or privacy issue.
• Provide us a reasonable amount of time to resolve the issue before you disclose it publicly.
• Make every effort to avoid privacy violations, degradation of user experience, disruption to production systems, and destruction or manipulation of data.
• Only use exploits to the extent necessary to confirm a vulnerability’s presence. Do not use an exploit to compromise or exfiltrate data, establish persistent command line access, or use the exploit to “pivot” to other systems.
• Do not submit a high volume of low-quality reports.

Once you’ve established that a vulnerability exists or encounter any sensitive data (including personally identifiable information, financial information, or proprietary information or trade secrets of any party), you must stop your test, notify us immediately, and not disclose this data to anyone else.

Reporting a Vulnerability

We accept vulnerability reports via email to securitycontact@presidiotrust.gov. Reports may be submitted anonymously. We do not accept PGP-encrypted emails at this time.

To assist with the triaging and prioritization of submissions, we ask that your reports:

• Describe the vulnerability, where it was discovered, and the potential impact of exploitation.
• Offer a detailed description of the steps needed to reproduce the vulnerability (proof of concept script or screenshots are helpful).
• Be in English, if possible.

By submitting a vulnerability, you acknowledge that you have no expectation of payment and that you expressly waive any future pay claims against the U.S. Government related to your submission.

What You Can Expect From Us

When you choose to share your contact information with us, we commit to coordinating with you as openly and as quickly as possible:

• Within 3 business days, we will acknowledge that your report has been received.
• To the best of our ability, we will confirm the existence of the vulnerability to you and be as transparent as possible about what steps we are taking during the remediation process, including on issues or challenges that may delay resolution.
• We will maintain an open dialogue to discuss issues.

Information submitted under this policy will be used for defensive purposes only – to mitigate or remediate vulnerabilities. If your findings include newly discovered vulnerabilities that affect all users of a product or service and not solely the Presidio Trust, we may share your report with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, where it will be handled under their coordinated vulnerability disclosure process. We will not share your name or contact information without your express permission.

Legal

If you conduct your security research and vulnerability disclosure activities in accordance with all restrictions and guidelines set forth in this policy, (1) the Presidio Trust will not initiate or recommend any law enforcement or civil lawsuits related to such activities, and (2) in the event of any law enforcement or civil action brought by anyone other than the Presidio Trust, the Presidio Trust will take steps to make known that your activities were conducted pursuant to and in compliance with this policy.

You must comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws in connection with your security research activities or other participation in this vulnerability disclosure program.

The Presidio Trust does not authorize, permit, or otherwise allow (expressly or impliedly) any person, including any individual, group of individuals, consortium, partnership, or any other business or legal entity to engage in any security research or vulnerability or threat disclosure activity that is inconsistent with this policy or the law. If you engage in any activities that are inconsistent with this policy or the law, you may be subject to criminal and/or civil liabilities.

To the extent that any security research or vulnerability disclosure activity involves the networks, systems, information, applications, products, or services of a non-Presidio Trust entity (e.g., other federal departments or agencies; state, local or tribal governments; private sector companies or persons; employees or personnel of any such entities; or any other such third party), that non-Presidio Trust third party may independently determine whether to pursue legal action or remedies related to such activities.

The Presidio Trust may modify the terms of this policy or terminate the policy at any time.

Questions

Questions regarding this policy may be sent to securitycontact@presidiotrust.gov​. We also invite you to contact us with suggestions for improving this policy.