The Importance of a Security.txt File

Do you own or maintain any websites? If yes, this might be helpful for you.

Security is a significant concern for any website these days. To help provide security to their users, many websites have adopted the proposed security standard of a Security.txt file to allow researchers and hackers alike to find vulnerabilities and report them without fear of legal reprisal. This article will discuss what security.txt files are, how they work, why your business/owner of the website should care about adopting them, and more!

What is a security.txt file?

It is one of the proposed website standards that allows owners and security researchers to work more closely to report any identified security issues.

This "security.txt" file is a new open standard and still in the draft stage, used by website administrators, bug bounty hunters, and other security researchers who want to share information about discovered vulnerabilities with website owners in an organized manner.

How does security.txt work?

If you are the site owner, you list contact information for reporting vulnerabilities (such as an email address and PGP key) in your security.txt file, and researchers can use this information to report any issues they find privately. By doing this, you make it easier for researchers to report vulnerabilities.

“security.txt” is generally placed on your website at "https://www.example.com/.wellknown/security.txt"

Here are the example contents of the "security.txt" file.

Why should you care about security.txt?

A common phrase in the security industry is, "Security is only as strong as the weakest link." A single security bug is more than enough to compromise the complete chain.

The website owner might ensure all the necessary steps to protect their online asset from all malicious actors.

The security vulnerabilities are like the "Cat and Mouse" story as the developers continuously work in a fast-paced agile environment to deliver value to the customers in a shorter time, where some security issues might go unnoticed.

However, if an attacker can find and exploit a vulnerability on the website that was not patched or adequately addressed, it can potentially do much damage.

As a site owner, you should care about adopting security.txt files because they can help make it easier for researchers to report vulnerabilities to you privately and securely. This can help protect the researcher and your website from legal repercussions if the vulnerability is not reported responsibly.

Additional Benefits:

— Information about the organization's secure disclosure policy can be stated so that researchers can look at and comply to the best extent.

— The security.txt file helps information to communicate directly with the respective security team, who is already familiar with the reported topic.

— Security researchers can also understand what part of the website is in scope for testing and what is not part of the scope.

— Acknowledgments for all the previously reported security researchers.

— Links to job references if the organization seeks a security analyst or red team expert.

It is easy! You can create a security.txt file using this handy tool: https://securitytxt.org/#generate

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security.txt

https://securitytxt.org/ - Template Generation

https://github.com/securitytxt/security-txt