He's right, and you are indeed recapitulating a discussion that has happened a zillion times on HN before. At some point (maybe I haven't read far enough down on the thread), The Grugq will chime in and confirm it, just in case you were doubting it. This isn't specific to Facebook; it's a common misapprehension of how bugs are valued for all SaaS companies.
People don't pay top dollar for speculative bugs. I'm sure there's some horrible market somewhere for stolen celebrity photos, but it generates a pittance compared to the people who harvest and exploit popped desktop computers.
It's not enough to imagine some way you could profit from the bug, for the same reason that you can't make 100 million dollars simply by coming up with the idea for an interesting startup. A viable exploit is just one part of the technical and business work that goes into profiting from a vulnerability. All the work, together, has to add up to less than the value of the exploit.
Moreover: pretty much nobody is planning out elaborate criminal enterprises based on Facebook bugs, because every one of those bugs takes a different form, has a different likelihood of discovery, and has a different payoff.
The bizarre part here is that Facebook is competing against a market that the security researcher is not allowed to participate in by law.
Facebook sets the price, not the market. That's why the speculative value of a bug should be relevant, not the practical value. If this guy were allowed to openly market his bug to all parties, it would be guaranteed to be worth much more than $15k.
The price to Facebook is totally arbitrary. They could pay this guy $10 and it would still be fair under your position, because it's better than the alternative of committing a felony by finding someone to outbid Facebook.
That's almost true. If Fb bid only $10, you could see bidding simply for the right to (a) announce the bug or (b) post a hash and lord it over Fb. There's a vanity value for some of these bugs that probably goes into the hundreds of dollars.
But the rest of your point? Yep. Sounds about right. Though I don't think it's quite fair to say that "Fb sets the price, not the market", since Fb is the market for these bugs.
You may choose (like you actually do) to make-believe whatever you wish about the exploits' worthlessness, but you may also assume that there already were a lot of black hats out there that provided "service" relying on the recently covered security weakness.
Also, about the "Facebook's security team is one of the strongest and most sophisticated of any company" mantra, even a mediocre strategist after knowing at least something about his opponents can improve his attack based on that knowledge. Assuming a modicum of surveillance on traffic dynamic from Facebook security team's part, this may translate into hiding the signature of a brute-force attack by spreading it into space (using a botnet) and time (spreading out a little each individual trial), or into a more elaborate method.
Don't move the goalposts. I'm not saying there aren't black hats that target Facebook. I'm saying none of them will pay $15000, or even $500, for this or any other Fb bug.
"Don't move the goalposts. I'm not saying there aren't black hats that target Facebook."
Actually, you didn't limited yourself to "black hats that target Facebook", you put "he's right" tag on a pretty broad range of remarks! One of them was about the Facebook's super team of security experts (which I answered to, so I'm not sure what goal post moving you've seen, BTW), and another remark was "he would not even be able to find a seller, let alone one who would pay a lot" which I'm not sure I understand from which angle are you looking at things by concluding that "he's right". Let me elaborate a little bit. That bug had enough potential to power an account hacking service derived cash flow for unspecified number of black hats, as the way anyone in possession of something valuable would first and foremost try to use and only secondly - to sell, you know? In such context his remark doesn't even come to make much sense, so I'm not sure how "he's right" in your view.
I've read again dsacco's post and I see another nonsensical remark: "The total impact of the bug would be negligible." How do you judge the impact of the said bug? Would say, disrupting somewhere the digital social connections between some political figures and their mass of followers so they'd loose contact for a while (exactly when it maters) count as "negligible"? Let's stop talking about pranks around TMZ, let's talk about the most lucrative possible cases here. And all this in itself becomes possible because Facebook is a high value target (another fact dismissed by dsacco, whom you consider to be "right").
Finally, about "none of them will pay $15000, or even $500, for this or any other Fb bug" - if right now, it would so happen for me to be willing to pay for a Facebook account hijacking method those $500 (which BTW is a tempting figure), what value would this conviction of yours still hold?
I would say you were paying $500 for a vanity bug, and not be especially surprised.
What 'dsacco is saying is essentially factual. The places that buy vulnerabilities don't buy Fb account takeover bugs.
You might find someone in --- another part of the world, let's say --- who would offer you a couple thousand for that bug. You should know, if you're ever in a position to make that deal, that the person who is buying it from you is willing to kill your whole family to make a point, because that is the reason they are buying the bug from you.
But you aren't going to find that person, any more than you're going to easily find someone to sell a portable antiaircraft missile to.
"I would say you were paying $500 for a vanity bug"
No, it would be just an (admittedly shady) business investment.
"What 'dsacco is saying is essentially factual. The places that buy vulnerabilities don't buy Fb account takeover bugs."
You either didn't read my post or you are deliberately ignoring it. dsacco was wrong on so many aspects and so were you when supported him, as for what you're doing now... I'm not sure what to make of it!
I'm sorry, but I don't see anything in this comment that is responsive to anything I've written or that introduces any new argument for me to respond to.
People don't pay top dollar for speculative bugs. I'm sure there's some horrible market somewhere for stolen celebrity photos, but it generates a pittance compared to the people who harvest and exploit popped desktop computers.
It's not enough to imagine some way you could profit from the bug, for the same reason that you can't make 100 million dollars simply by coming up with the idea for an interesting startup. A viable exploit is just one part of the technical and business work that goes into profiting from a vulnerability. All the work, together, has to add up to less than the value of the exploit.
Moreover: pretty much nobody is planning out elaborate criminal enterprises based on Facebook bugs, because every one of those bugs takes a different form, has a different likelihood of discovery, and has a different payoff.