Introduction

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is committed to ensuring the security of the American public by protecting their information from unwarranted disclosure. This policy is intended to give security researchers clear guidelines for conducting vulnerability discovery activities and to convey our preferences in how to submit discovered vulnerabilities to us.

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

We want security researchers to feel comfortable reporting vulnerabilities they’ve discovered – as set out in this policy – so we can fix them and keep our users safe. 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.

Authorization

If you make a good faith effort to 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, and HHS will not recommend or pursue legal action related to your research.

Guidelines

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

• Notify us as soon as possible after you discover a real or potential security issue.
• 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 command line access and/or persistence, or use the exploit to “pivot” to other systems.
• Provide us a reasonable amount of time to resolve the issue before you disclose it publicly.
• You do not intentionally compromise the privacy or safety of HHS personnel (e.g. civilian employees or military members), or any third parties.
• You do not intentionally compromise the intellectual property or other commercial or financial interests of any HHS personnel or entities, or any third parties.

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.

For a full list of program scope please visit the HHS Vulnerability Disclosure Policy.

Typical Vulnerabilities Accepted:

• OWASP Top 10 vulnerability categories
• Other vulnerabilities with demonstrated impact

Typical Out of Scope:

• Theoretical vulnerabilities
• Informational disclosure of non-sensitive data
• Low impact session management issues
• Self XSS (user defined payload)

For a full list of program scope please visit the Responsible Disclosure details page.

Responsible Disclosure Guidelines:

• Adhere to all legal terms and conditions outlined at responsibledisclosure.com
• Work directly with ResponsibleDisclosure.com on vulnerability submissions
• Provide detailed description of a proof of concept to detail reproduction of vulnerabilities
• Do not engage in disruptive testing like DoS or any action that could impact the confidentiality, integrity or availability of information and systems
• Do not engage in social engineering or phishing of customers or employees
• Do not request compensation for time and materials or vulnerabilities discovered