Cybersecurity Firm Hires Two Students Who Were Arrested Over FreeHour Incident
A cybersecurity company has stepped into the ongoing FreeHour controversy to support two of the students arrested after gaining access to the media company’s app and asking for money in return for disclosing their vulnerabilities.
“Our team reached out and helped,” Dedaub said in a Twitter post alongside an image of the four students behind superimposed prison bars.
“Two of them have been hired; we’re covering their legal and engaging in discussion with authorities,” it continued.
Co-founded by Neville Grech, who is an “Ethereum white hat hacker with 15 years experience in software engineering”, the company describes itself as being “at the forefront in the smart contract security and auditing space”.
It is unclear which two students they hired from the four that were arrested.
BREAKING: Computing students arrested for *disclosing* a vulnerability in a Web2 app
This happened in Malta, very recently
Our team reached out and helped:
– Two of them have been hired
– We’re covering their legal
– Engaging in discussions with authorities pic.twitter.com/X0eaMLNWaG— Dedaub (@dedaub) April 12, 2023
Police were called in after FreeHour CEO Zach Ciappara received an email from the four students, saying they had accessed his app without consent and discovered vulnerabilities that could put users data at risk.
They requested a “bug bounty” payment for discovering the vulnerabilities, and gave Ciappara a 90 day deadline to fix the vulnerabilities before they’d disclose what they found to the public.
Ciappara called the police after seeking legal advice from his lawyer; since then however, the heavy-handed police approach, which included strip searching the students, alongside the fact that they were arrested led to wide backlash among students and even politicians.
Cover photo inset: Times of Malta
What do you make of the latest development in the wake of the “ethical hack”?
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