Expands the main menu

Vulnerability Disclosure Policy

Introduction

The USPS OIG is committed to ensuring the security of the American public by protecting their information. The USPS OIG encourages the public to contact us to report potential vulnerabilities in our systems. This vulnerability disclosure policy is an essential element of the USPS OIG’s enterprise vulnerability management program and critical to the security of internet-accessible federal information systems. The USPS OIG has created this policy to give guidelines to security researchers conducting vulnerability discovery activities. This policy covers which systems and types of research are permitted, how security researchers can send the USPS OIG vulnerability reports, and how long security researchers must wait before publicly disclosing vulnerabilities.

Scope

This policy applies to https://www.uspsoig.gov/, which is the primary public facing service for the USPS OIG. Any other systems or services, such as any connected services, are excluded from scope and are not authorized for testing. Any vulnerabilities found in systems from our vendors fall outside of this policy’s scope and should be reported directly to the vendor according to their disclosure policy (if any). If you aren’t sure whether a system is in scope or not, contact the USPS OIG at IncidentReport@uspsoig.gov before starting your research (or at the security contact for the system’s domain name listed on get.gov).

Though the USPS OIG develops and maintains other internet-accessible systems or services, this policy only applies to active research and testing on the above systems and services. If there is a particular system not in scope that you think merits testing, please contact the USPS OIG to discuss it first.

Authorization

If you make a good faith effort to comply with this policy during your security research, the USPS OIG will consider your research to be authorized. We will work with you to understand and resolve the issue quickly, and the USPS OIG 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 USPS OIG will make this authorization known.

Guidelines

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 the USPS OIG immediately, and not disclose this data to anyone else.

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

  • Notify the USPS OIG 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 the USPS OIG a reasonable amount of time to resolve the issue before you disclose it publicly.
  • Do not submit a high volume of low-quality reports.

Disallowed 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 (office access, open doors, or tailgating), social engineering (phishing or vishing), or any other non-technical vulnerability testing

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

We accept vulnerability reports sent to IncidentReport@uspsoig.gov. Reports may be submitted anonymously. If you share your contact information, we will acknowledge receipt of your report within 3 business days. We do not support PGP-encrypted emails.  

Communication

In order to help the USPS OIG triage and prioritize submissions, we recommend 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)
  • Communication, including submitted work reports, in English, if possible.

When you choose to share your contact information with us, we commit to coordinating with you as openly and as quickly as possible.  Within 3 business days, we will acknowledge that your report has been received.  To the best of our ability, we will confirm the existence of the vulnerability to you and be as transparent as possible about what steps we are taking during the remediation process, including on issues or challenges that may delay resolution.  We will maintain an open dialogue to discuss issues.

 

Questions regarding or suggestions for improving this policy may be sent to IncidentReport@uspsoig.gov.