Tennessee Valley Authority
External Program
Submit bugs directly to this organization
Tennessee Valley Authority
External Program
Submit bugs directly to this organization
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. We encourage you to contact us to report potential vulnerabilities in our systems or if you find information in general about TVA that could pose significant harm if disclosed. Vulnerabilities submitted to TVA will be used for defensive purposes to mitigate or remediate vulnerabilities in our network services and those of our vendors.
If you make a good faith effort to comply with this policy during your security research, we will consider that security research to be authorized, we will work with you to understand and resolve the issue quickly, and Tennessee Valley Authority will not recommend legal action related to your security research that is consistent with this policy. You are expected, as always, to comply with all applicable laws.
Under this policy, “research” means activities in which you:
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.
The following test methods are not authorized:
##Out of Scope Vulnerabilities
The following vulnerabilities are considered Out of Scope:
TVA leverages third-party services and managed service providers (MSPs) to provide communications capabilities or externally available services to the general public or its business partners. These third-party services may have their own vulnerability disclosure program or vendor-specific privacy policies. If that is the case, submit vulnerability disclosures through the vendor’s specific VDP requirements. Testing of vendor websites outside of this policy is not protected under this disclosure program and may be subject to legal actions. If it is not possible to obtain the vendor’s authorization, you may not include those systems or services in scope of this policy.
This policy applies to the following systems and services:
This includes any OSINT data gathered that pertains to a TVA digital asset. e.g. compromised passwords, sensitive data stored in public repositories like GitHub etc.
Any service not expressly listed above, 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 [email protected] before starting your research (or at the security contact for the system’s domain name listed in the .gov WHOIS). 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 [email protected]. We will add additional sites to the scope as resources permit.
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 Tennessee Valley Authority, 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.
Reports may be submitted anonymously. If you share contact information, we will make best efforts to acknowledge receipt of your report within 3 business days.
We do not support PGP-encrypted emails. For particularly sensitive information, submit through our HTTPS web form.
By submitting a vulnerability, you acknowledge that you have no expectation of payment and that you expressly waive any future pay claims against the U.S. Government related to your submission.
In order to help us triage and prioritize submissions, we recommend that your reports:
When you submit a vulnerability report to this program, we commit to coordinating with you as openly and as quickly as possible.
If you make a good faith effort to comply with this policy during your security research, we will consider that security research to be authorized, we will work with you to understand and resolve the issue quickly, and Tennessee Valley Authority will not recommend legal action related to your security research that is consistent with this policy. You are expected, as always, to comply with all applicable laws.
Questions regarding this policy may be sent to [email protected]. We also invite you to contact us with suggestions for improving this policy.
400 WEST SUMMIT HILL DRIVE KNOXVILLE, TN 37902 (865) 632-2101 [email protected]