Report a vulnerability on a GOV.UK domain or subdomain

A vulnerability is a technical issue with the GOV.UK website which attackers or hackers could use to exploit the website and its users.

Vulnerabilities are covered by this policy if the security.txt file for the domain points to this page.

You will not be paid a reward for reporting a vulnerability (known as a ‘bug bounty’).

How to report a vulnerability

Include in your report:

• the IP address and/or URL of the page where you found the vulnerability
• a description of the type of vulnerability - for example, XSS vulnerability
• details of the steps we need to take to reproduce the vulnerability
• screenshots or logs if you have them

Report a vulnerability on HackerOne.

Guidelines for reporting a vulnerability

When you are investigating and reporting the vulnerability on a GOV.UK domain or subdomain, you must not:

• break the law
• access unnecessary or excessive amounts of data
• modify data
• use high-intensity invasive or destructive scanning tools to find vulnerabilities
• try a denial of service - for example overwhelming a service on GOV.UK with a high volume of requests
• disrupt GOV.UK’s services or systems
• tell other people about the vulnerability you have found until we have disclosed it
• social engineer, phish or physically attack our staff or infrastructure
• demand money to disclose a vulnerability

Only submit reports about exploitable vulnerabilities through HackerOne.

Contact GOV.UK to report other issues including:

• a non-exploitable vulnerability
• something you think could be improved - for example, missing security headers
• TLS configuration weaknesses - for example weak cipher suite support or the presence of TLS1.0 support

Data protection

You must follow data protection rules when reporting a vulnerability. This means you cannot share any data you might retrieve from GOV.UK when researching the vulnerability.

You must keep the data secure until you delete it. You must delete the data as soon as we no longer need it or no later than 1 month after the vulnerability has been resolved - whichever comes first.

After you’ve reported the vulnerability

You’ll get updates on the progress fixing the vulnerability through HackerOne, if you have an account.

You’ll get confirmation that we have received your report within 5 working days. We’ll try to assess your report within 10 working days. We prioritise fixes by impact, severity and exploit complexity.

Once the vulnerability has been fixed, we can work with you to disclose and publish the report.