Digital Flanders Vulnerability Disclosure Program

This program will not provide any cash reward or financial incentive of any kind for the detection and/or resolution of the validated vulnerability.

We have long enjoyed a close relationship with the security research community. To honor external contributions that help us keep citizens and government users safe, welcome on our Vulnerability Disclosure Program for Digital Flanders–owned web properties.

Program Rules

Testing Policy, Responsible Disclosure

Please adhere to the following rules while performing research on this program:

• Denial of service (DoS) attacks on Bind applications, servers, networks or infrastructure are strictly forbidden.
• Avoid tests that could cause degradation or interruption of our services.
• Do not use automated scanners or tools that generate large amount of network traffic
• Do not leak, copy, manipulate, or destroy any user data or files in any of our applications/servers.
• No vulnerability disclosure, full, partial or otherwise, is allowed.
• Make sure to apply hunting requirements policy (User-Agent, VPN...)

Important precautions and limitations

As a complement to the Program’s rules and testing policy :

• DO NOT alter compromised accounts by creating, deleting or modifying any data
• DO NOT use compromised accounts to search for post-auth vulnerabilities (they won’t be eligible anyway)
• DO NOT include Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in your report and please REDACT/OBFUSCATE the PII that is part of your PoC (screenshot, server response, JSON file, etc.) as much as possible.
• In case of exposed credentials or secrets, limit yourself to verifying the credentials validity
• In case of sensitive information leak, DO NOT extract/copy every document or data that is exposed and limit yourself to describe and list what is exposed.

Qualifying Vulnerabilities

• SQL Injection (SQLi)
• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
• Remote Code Execution (RCE)
• Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR)
• Horizontal and vertical privilege escalation
• Authentication bypass & broken authentication
• Business Logic Errors vulnerability with real security impact
• Local files access and manipulation (LFI, RFI, XXE, SSRF, XSPA)
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) with real security impact
• Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF) with real security impact
• Open Redirect
• Exposed secrets, credentials or sensitive information on an asset under our control and affecting at least one of our scopes

Non-Qualifying Vulnerabilities

• Broken Link/Social media Hijacking
• Tabnabbing
• Missing cookie flags
• Content/Text injections
• Clickjacking/UI redressing
• Denial of Service (DoS) attacks
• Recently disclosed CVEs (less than 30 days sinces patch release)
• CVEs without exploitable vulnerabilities and PoC
• Open ports or services without exploitable vulnerabilities and PoC
• Social engineering of staff or contractors
• Presence of autocomplete attribute on web forms
• Vulnerabilities affecting outdated browsers or platforms
• Self-XSS or XSS that cannot be used to impact other users
• Any hypothetical flaw or best practices without exploitable vulnerabilities and PoC
• SSL/TLS issues (e.g. expired certificates, best practices)
• Unexploitable vulnerabilities (e.g. Self-XSS, XSS or Open Redirect through HTTP headers...)
• Reports with attack scenarios requiring MITM or physical access to victim's device
• Missing security-related HTTP headers which do not lead directly to an exploitable vulnerability and PoC
• Low severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) (e.g. Unauthenticated / Logout / Login / Products cart updates...)
• Invalid or missing email security records (e.g. SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Session management issues (e.g. lack of expiration, no logout on password change, concurrent sessions)
• Disclosure of information without exploitable vulnerabilities and PoC (e.g. stack traces, path disclosure, directory listings, software versions, IP disclosure, 3rd party secrets, EXIF Metadata, Origin IP)
• CSV injection
• Malicious file upload (e.g. EICAR files, .EXE)
• HTTP Strict Transport Security Header (HSTS)
• Subdomain takeover without a full exploitable vulnerability and PoC or not applicable to the scope
• Blind SSRF without exploitable vulnerabilities and PoC (e.g. DNS & HTTP pingback, Wordpress XMLRPC)
• Lack or bypass of rate-limiting, brute-forcing or captcha issues
• User enumeration (e.g. email, alias, GUID, phone number, common CMS endpoints)
• Weak password policies (e.g. length, complexity, reuse)
• Ability to spam users (email / SMS / direct messages flooding)
• Disclosed or misconfigured public API keys (e.g. Google Maps, Firebase, analytics tools...)
• Password reset token sent via HTTP referer to external services (e.g. analytics / ads platforms)
• Stolen secrets, credentials or information gathered from a third-party asset that we have no control over
• Exposed secrets, credentials or information on an asset under our control that are not applicable to the program’s scope
• Pre-account takeover (e.g. account creation via oAuth)
• GraphQL Introspection is enabled

Guidance for reporting

We are happy to thank everyone who submits valid reports which help us improve the security of Digital Flanders, however only those that meet the following eligibility requirements may be recognized:

• The vulnerability must be a qualifying vulnerability
• The report must contain the following elements:
  • Clear textual description of the vulnerability, how it can be exploited, the security impact it has on the application, its users and Digital Flanders, and remediation advice on fixing the vulnerability
  • Proof of exploitation: screenshots demonstrating the exploit was performed, and showing the final impact
  • Provide complete steps with the necessary information to reproduce the exploit, including (if necessary) code snippets, payloads, commands etc
• You must not break any of the testing policy rules listed above

Recognition and Report Quality

Recognition may be adjusted based on report quality:

• Exceptional Quality (highlighted): Proposed patch/mitigation, clear root cause analysis.
• Good Quality (standard): Accurate description, working PoC, step-by-step reproduction, responsive to questions.
• Low Quality (reduced): Vague impact, incomplete details, no working PoC.
• Downgrades may apply for findings requiring: minor impact, prior/project access, heavy user interaction, or impractical exploitation.
• No monetary rewards will be given
• All valid reports will receive Hall of Fame recognition.
• Exceptional-quality reports may receive elevated recognition or special visibility.

EXAMPLES

• Critical RCE on *.vlaanderen.be login system, exceptional-quality report → Hall of Fame (highlighted)
• IDOR leaking citizen addresses on a normal DV app, good-quality report → Hall of Fame (standard)
• XSS in beta widget, exploitable only with heavy user interaction → Hall of Fame (downgraded)
• Verbose error message without sensitive info → Out of scope

RECOGNITION LEVELS

SEVERITY LEVELS