Not so obviously. IDefense has been doing this for a couple of years. By paying for the vuln research they get to be first to announce the vulns to the community. Looks like TP is going to do the same thing.folks, as it was announced few minutes ago that "3Com launches vulnerability-buying program" (through TippingPoint, a company 3Com acquired earlier this year) http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11253 http://www.zerodayinitiative.com/ so what do you think about this step? Obviously, they are trying to fight public disclosure of security vunl's (that why bugtraq exists) and buy the information so they can have 0day signatures to TippingPoint IPS solution.
I doubt they'd get any 0day sigs, since they'd be buying others' research. The horse is already out of the barn by then.
Paul Schmehl (pauls@xxxxxxxxxxxx) Adjunct Information Security Officer University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/