> Their initial reply from the CEO: "I would love to hear what the vulnerability is, but I assume you want to get paid for it. Is that the play?"

Well that’s pretty damning.

Should have been handled better, but some context is necessary:

If your name is associated with a startup in a visible leadership position you will get mass-spammed from people claiming to have discovered critical vulnerabilities in your system. When you engage with them, the conversation will turn into requests to hire them for their services.

So the CEO handled it poorly, but it's also not a great choice to withhold the details of the vulnerability in initial contact. If the goal was to get something fixed it should have been included in an easy-to-forward e-mail that could have been sent to someone who could act upon it.

Anyone who works with security or bug bounties can tell you that the volume of bad reports was a problem before LLMs. Now that everyone thinks they're going to use LLMs to get gigs as pentesters the volume of reports is completely out of control.

I keep getting emails with the content like: "I found a critical bypass vulnerability in your app what is the appropriate channel to disclose it, and do you have a bounty program?"

I tried engaging and replying to them, and it inevitably turns into: "Yeah, we don't actually have the vulnerability, but you are totally vulnerable, just let us do a security audit for you".

I have a pre-written reply for these kinds of messages now.

i have even more damning ones.

When the "good Samaritan" do not go to the vendor, they go to the client (i.e., they do not contact the DIB company, they contact the Gov agency).

I have seen government contractors getting pilloried, losing their livelihood when this happened. And, yes there is always a "quick fix offer" by the "good Samaritan" to the vendor and promised re-assurance to the Gov agency, only if this misguided vendor would go with their solution.

It is also not unusual to find out later on, that the identification or even the resource reported on was wrong - but by this time the Gov agency already punished the contractor and the reporting "good Samaritan" is laughing (sometimes to the bank).

they can get away with unethical vulnerability disclosure because think of the children, the threat to the nation, grandma off the cliff, and <insert your favorite cliche justification of malfeasance>.

Yes, sore subject.

They could sell the next one to an adversary for a lot more money if they're going to act like that.