Skip Header
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Policies

FDIC Vulnerability Disclosure Policy

Last Updated: October 10, 2023
Share on X

Vulnerability Disclosure Policy

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) is committed to maintaining the security of our systems and protecting sensitive information from unauthorized disclosure.

This policy describes what systems and types of security research are covered under this policy, how to send us vulnerability reports, and action for publicly disclosing vulnerabilities.

We encourage security researchers to contact us to report potential vulnerabilities identified in FDIC systems.  For reports submitted in compliance with this policy, the FDIC will acknowledge receipt within three business days, endeavor to promptly validate submissions, implement corrective actions if appropriate, and inform researchers of the disposition of reported vulnerabilities.

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 we will not recommend or pursue legal action related to your research.

Test Methods

Security researchers must not:

  • test any system other than the systems set forth in the ‘Scope’ section below;
  • disclose vulnerability information except as set forth in the ‘Reporting a Vulnerability’ and ‘Disclosure’ sections below;
  • engage in physical testing of facilities or resources;
  • engage in social engineering;
  • send unsolicited electronic mail to FDIC users, including “phishing” messages;
  • execute or attempt to execute “Denial of Service” or “Resource Exhaustion” attacks;
  • introduce malicious software;
  • test in a manner which could degrade the operation of FDIC systems; or intentionally impair, disrupt, or disable FDIC systems;
  • test third-party applications, websites, or services that integrate with or link to or from FDIC systems;
  • delete data from or alter data on FDIC systems;
  • share nonpublic FDIC data;
  • retain FDIC data any longer than is necessary for authorized testing of FDIC systems or for documentation of the presence of a potential vulnerability;
  • destroy or render FDIC data inaccessible;
  • disclose any personally identifiable information discovered to any third party, or;
  • use an exploit to exfiltrate data, establish command line access, establish a persistent presence on FDIC systems, or “pivot” to other FDIC systems.

Security researchers may:

  • view or store FDIC nonpublic data only to the extent necessary to document the presence of a potential vulnerability

Security researchers must:

  • cease testing and notify us immediately upon discovery of a vulnerability
  • cease testing and notify us immediately upon encountering nonpublic data
  • purge any stored FDIC nonpublic data upon reporting a vulnerability

Scope

This policy applies to all FDIC-managed systems and services that are accessible from the Internet. This includes systems and services on the registered domains names FDIC.gov, FDICCONNECT.gov, FDISOIG.gov, and OFIA.gov. 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 its disclosure policy (if any).

Reporting a Vulnerability

We accept vulnerability reports through our BugCrowd program (https://bugcrowd.com/fdic-vdp) and questions can be directed to reportavulnerability@FDIC.gov.

Reports may be submitted anonymously. If you provide contact information, then we may contact you to clarify reported vulnerability information.

By submitting a report to the FDIC, researchers warrant that the report and any attachments do not violate the intellectual property rights of any third party and the submitter grants the FDIC a non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide, perpetual license to use, reproduce, create derivative works, and publish the report and any attachments.

Disclosure

The FDIC is committed to timely correction of vulnerabilities.  However, we recognize that public disclosure of a vulnerability in absence of a readily-available corrective action likely increases versus decreases risk.  If you believe others should be informed of the vulnerability prior to our implementation of corrective actions, we request that you coordinate in advance with us.

We may share vulnerability reports with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), as well as any affected vendors.  We will not share names or contact data of security researchers unless given explicit permission.

Questions

Questions regarding this policy may be sent to reportavulnerability@FDIC.gov. The FDIC encourages security researchers to contact us for clarification on any element of this policy.  Please contact us prior to conducting research if you are unsure if a specific test method is inconsistent with or unaddressed by this policy.  We also invite security researchers to contact us with suggestions for improving this policy.