Vulnerability disclosure is such a painful issue.  However, some people are trying to make it as painful as possible.  They slap and kick people with the release of 0-day vulnerabilities, and tell them it’s for their own good.  In their fantasies, sometime in the future, we’ll be thanking them.  In reality, they make me feel sympathy for the vendors. 

They cite disillusionment with the “responsible disclosure” process.  They believe that this process forces them somehow to wait indefinitely on the pleasure of the vendor.  Whereas it is true that many vendors won’t and don’t fix known issues unless they are known publicly or are threatened with a public disclosure, it bemuses me that these people are unwilling to give the vendor a chance and wait a few weeks.  They use the excuse of a few bad vendors, or a few occurrences of delays in fixes, even “user smugness”, to systematically treat vendors and their clients badly.  This shows recklessness, impatience, intransigence, bad judgment and lack of discernment. 

I agree that reporting vulnerabilities correctly is a thankless task.  Besides my previous adventure with a web application, when reporting a few vulnerabilities to CERT/CC, I received no replies ever, not even an automated receipt.  It was like sending messages into a black hole.  Some vendors can become defensive and unpleasant instead.  However, that doesn’t provide a justification for not being gallant, and first giving an opportunity for the opposite side to behave badly.  If you don’t do at least that, then you are part of the problem.  As in many real life problems, the first one to use his fists is the loser.

What these security vigilantes are really doing is using as hostages the vendor’s clients, just to make an ideological point.  That is, they use the threat of security exploits to coerce or intimidate vendors and society for the sake of their objectives.  They believe that the ends justify the means.  Blackmail is done for personal gain, so what they are doing doesn’t fit the blackmail category, and it’s more than simple bullying.  Whereas the word “terrorism” has been overused and brandished too often as a scarecrow, compare the above to the definition of terrorism.  I realize that using this word, even correctly, can raise a lot of objections.  If you accept that a weaker form of terrorism is the replacement of physical violence with other threats, then it would be correct to call these people “small-time terrorists” (0-day pun intended).  Whatever you want to call them, in my opinion they are no longer just vigilantes, and certainly not heroes.  The only thing that can be said for them is, at least they didn’t try to profit directly from the disclosures.

Finally, let me make clear that I want to be informed, and I want disclosures to happen.  However, I’m certain that uncivil 0-day disclosures aren’t part of the answer.  There is an interesting coverage of this and related issues at C/NET.