Introduction

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) is committed to ensuring the security of the American public by protecting agency information technology systems. This policy is intended to give security researchers clear guidelines for conducting vulnerability discovery activities and to convey the DNFSB preferences in how to submit discovered vulnerabilities to the agency.

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

DNFSB encourages members of the public to contact the agency to report potential vulnerabilities in agency systems.

Authorization

If you make a good faith effort to comply with this policy during your security research, DNFSB will consider your research to be authorized; the agency will work with you to understand and resolve the issue quickly, and the DNFSB will not recommend or pursue legal action related to your research. Should legal action be initiated by a third party against you for activities that were conducted in accordance with this policy, the agency will make this authorization known to the third party. Guidelines Under this policy, “research” means activities in which you:

• Notify the agency as soon as possible after you discover a real or potential security vulnerability.
• Make every effort to avoid privacy violations, degradation of user experience, disruption to production systems, and destruction or manipulation of data.
• Only use system 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 or access other systems.
• Provide the DNFSB a reasonable amount of time to resolve the issue before you disclose it publicly.
• Do not submit a high volume of low-quality reports.

Once you have 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 the agency immediately, and not download, retain, or disclose this data to anyone else.

Test methods

The following test 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

Testing must comply with Federal and State laws.

Scope

This policy applies to the following systems and services:

• DNFSB General Support System

Any service not expressly listed above, such as any connected services, are excluded from scope and are not authorized for testing. Additionally, vulnerabilities found in systems from DNFSB vendors fall outside of this policy’s scope and should be reported directly to the vendor according to the vendor’s disclosure policy:

• https://www.acquia.com/why-acquia/industries/security#responsible-disclosure
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/cvd
• https://legal.yahoo.com/xw/en/yahoo/coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure-program-policy/index.html

If you are not sure whether a system is in scope or not, contact the agency at Vulnerability@dnfsb.gov before starting your research (or at the security contact for the system’s domain name listed in the .gov WHOIS). Though the DNFSB maintains other internet-accessible systems or services, the agency asks that active research and testing only be conducted on the systems and services covered by the scope of this Policy. If there is a particular system not in scope that you think merits testing, please contact the agency to request testing permission.

Reporting a vulnerability

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 DNFSB, the agency may share your report with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, where it will be handled under their coordinated vulnerability disclosure process. The DNFSB will not share your name or contact information without your express permission.

The DNFSB accepts vulnerability reports at Vulnerability@dnfsb.gov. Reports may be submitted anonymously. If you share contact information, the agency will acknowledge receipt of your report within 3 business days.

The DNFSB does not support Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encrypted emails.

What we would like to see from you

In order to help the agency triage and prioritize submissions, the agency recommends that your reports:

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

What you can expect from us

When you choose to share your contact information with the DNFSB, we commit to coordinating with you as openly and as quickly as possible.

• Within 3 business days, the agency will acknowledge that your report has been received.
• To the best of our ability, the DNFSB will confirm the existence of the vulnerability to you and be as transparent as possible about what steps the agency is taking during the remediation process, including on issues or challenges that may delay resolution.
• The DNFSB will maintain an open dialogue to discuss issues.
• The DNFSB does not have a bounty payment authorization or process for security vulnerability reporting.

Questions

Questions regarding this policy may be sent to Vulnerability@dnfsb.gov. The DNFSB also invites you to contact us with suggestions for improving this policy.

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