This is extremely disappointing. The insurer in question has a very good reputation within the dive community for acting in good faith and for providing medical information free of charge to non-members.

This sounds like a cultural mismatch with their lawyers. Which is ironic, since the lawyers in question probably thought of themselves as being risk-averse and doing everything possible to protect the organisation's reputation.

Another comment says the situation was fake. I don't know, but to avoid running afoul of the authorities, it's possible to document this without actually accessing user data without permission. In the US, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and various state laws are written extremely broadly and were written at a time when most access was either direct dial-up or internal. The meaning of abuse can be twisted to mean rewriting a URL to access the next user, or inputting a user ID that is not authorized to you.

Generally speaking, I think case law has avoided shooting the messenger, but if you use your unauthorized access to find PII on minors, you may be setting yourself up for problems, regardless if the goal is merely dramatic effect. You can, instead, document everything and hypothesize the potential risks of the vulnerability without exposing yourself to accusation of wrongdoing.

For example, the article talks about registering divers. The author could ask permission from the next diver to attempt to set their password without reading their email, and that would clearly show the vulnerability. No kids "in harm's way".

I've said before that we need strong legal protections for white-hat and even grey-hat security researchers or hackers. As long as they report what they have found and follow certain rules, they need to be protected from any prosecution or legal consequences. We need to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The problem is this is literally a matter of national security, and currently we sacrifice national security for the convenience of wealthy companies.

Also, we all have our private data leaked multiple times per month. We see millions of people having their private information leaked by these companies, and there are zero consequences. Currently, the companies say, "Well, it's our code, it's our responsibility; nobody is allowed to research or test the security of our code because it is our code and it is our responsibility." But then, when they leak the entire nation's private data, it's no longer their responsibility. They're not liable.

As security issues continue to become a bigger and bigger societal problem, remember that we are choosing to hamstring our security researchers. We can make a different choice and decide we want to utilize our security researchers instead, for the benefit of all and for better national security. It might cause some embarrassment for companies though, so I'm not holding my breath.

I find these tales of lawyerly threats completley validate the hackers actions. They reported the bug to spur the company to resolve it. Their reaction all but confirms that reporting it to them directly would not have been productive. Their management lacks good stewardship. They are not thinking about their responsibility to their customers and employees.

I think the problem is the process. Each country should have a reporting authority and it should be the one to deal with security issues.

So you never report to actual organization but to the security organization, like you did. And they would be more equiped to deal with this, maybe also validate how serious this issue is. Assign a reward as well.

So you are researcher, you report your thing and can't be sued or bullied by organization that is offending in the first place.

Maintaining Cybersecurity Insurance is a big deal in the US, I don't know about Europe. So vulnerability disclosure is problematic for data controllers because it threatens their insurance and premiums. Today much of enterprise security is attestation based and vulnerability disclosure potentially exposes companies to insurance fraud. If they stated that they maintained certain levels of security, and a disclosure demonstratively proves they do not, that is grounds for dropping a policy or even a lawsuit to reclaim paid funds.

So it sort of makes sense that companies would go on the attack because there's a risk that their insurance company will catch wind and they'll be on the hook.

Malta has been mentioned? As a person living here I could say that workflow of the government here is bad. Same as in every other place I guess.

By the way, I had a story when I accidentally hacked an online portal in our school. It didn't go much and I was "caught" but anyways. This is how we learn to be more careful.

I believe in every single system like that it's fairly possible to find a vulnerability. Nobody cares about them and people that make those systems don't have enough skill to do it right. Data is going to be leaked. That's the unfortunate truth. It gets worse with the come of AI. Since it has zero understanding of what it is actually it will make mistakes that would cause more data leaks.

Even if you don't consider yourself as an evil person, would you still stay the same knowing real security vulnerability? Who knows. Some might take advantage. Some won't and still be punished for doing everything as the "textbook way".

Messenger shooting is a common tactic with psychopaths.