Vulnerability Disclosure Policy

		Introduction \| Authorization \| Guidelines \| Test Methods \| Scope \| Rules of Engagement \| Reporting a Vulnerability \| Disclosure \| Questions

		Introduction The National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) is committed to ensuring the security of the American public and Indian tribes by protecting their information. This policy is intended to give security researchers clear guidelines for conducting vulnerability discovery activities and to convey our preferences in how to submit discovered vulnerabilities to us. This policy describes what systems and types of research are covered under this policy, how to send us vulnerability reports, and how long we ask security researchers to wait before publicly disclosing vulnerabilities. Disclosing vulnerabilities is consistent with the NIGC’s cybersecurity culture of accountability, consistency, and trustworthiness. We are very receptive to good faith efforts from security researchers sharing reports of potential vulnerabilities in our systems so we can prioritize remediation and keep our commitment to a secure IT environment at NIGC. Authorization 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 the NIGC 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, we will make this authorization known. Guidelines Under this policy, “research” means activities in which you: Notify us 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 persistent command line access, or use the exploit to pivot to other systems. Limit testing to the scope of this document. Provide a reasonable amount of time, not less than 90 days, to resolve the issue before you disclose it publicly. Do not request compensation for time and materials or vulnerabilities discovered. Do not submit a high volume of low-quality reports. 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 us immediately, and not disclose this data to anyone else. 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 (e.g. office access, open doors, tailgating), social engineering (e.g. phishing, vishing), or any other non-technical vulnerability testing. Scope Active research and testing are permitted only on internet-accessible systems and services identified in the scope of this policy. Any service not expressly listed below, such as any connected services, are excluded from scope and are not authorized for testing. Additionally, 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 us at cyberliaison@nigc.gov before starting your research. This policy applies to the following systems and services: .Nigc.gov Though we develop and maintain other internet-accessible systems or services, we ask that active research and testing only be conducted on the systems and services covered by the scope of this document. If there is a particular system not in scope that you think merits testing, please contact us to discuss it first. We will increase the scope of this policy over time. Rules of Engagement* Security researchers must not: Test any system other than the systems set forth in the ‘Scope’ section above, 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 NIGC 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 NIGC systems; or intentionally impair, disrupt, or disable NIGC systems, test third-party applications, websites, or services that integrate with or link to or from NIGC systems, delete, alter, share, retain, or destroy NIGC data, or render NIGC data inaccessible, or, use an exploit to exfiltrate data, establish command line access, establish a persistent presence on NIGC systems, or “pivot” to other NIGC systems. Security researchers may: View or store NIGC 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 discovery of an exposure of nonpublic data, and, purge any stored NIGC nonpublic data upon reporting a vulnerability. Reporting a Vulnerability We accept vulnerability reports at: http://bugcrowd.com/nigc-vdp. Reports may be submitted anonymously. If you share contact information, we will acknowledge receipt of your report within 3 business days. We do not support PGP-encrypted emails. 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 NIGC, 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. To help us triage and prioritize submissions, we recommend that your reports: Describe the vulnerability, where it 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). Be 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. We will confirm the existence of the vulnerability with you and inform you of our mitigation strategy. We may share vulnerability reports with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and any implicated vendors. We will maintain transparent communication with you until issue resolution. Disclosure NIGC is committed to timely correction of vulnerabilities. However, we recognize that public disclosure of a vulnerability in the absence of a readily available corrective action likely increases versus decreases risk. Accordingly, we require that you refrain from sharing information about discovered vulnerabilities for 90 calendar days after you have received our acknowledgement of receipt of your report. If you believe others should be informed of the vulnerability prior to our implementation of corrective actions, we require that you coordinate in advance with us. Questions Questions regarding this policy may be sent to cyberliaison@nigc.gov. We also invite you to contact us with suggestions for improving this policy.

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