Its security team Yahoo said any vulnerability discovered in penetration testing would be revealed to the public after a period of 90 days.
One of the group's responsibilities is to assess its level of security software which is written by Yahoo testing both code and from third parties and which is integrated into the service provided by the company.
The group calls itself the Yahoo Paranoids, and, led by Chris Rohlf, attacks infrastructure to find new vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
"This process helps us identify vulnerabilities, not just in software written by Yahoo, but in open-source and commercial products that we use in our network," Rohlf wrote in a statement on Tuesday. message to Tumblr.
The task of the new team is when they reveal unknown vulnerabilities in the code (also known as zero-day vulnerabilities) to be corrected immediately by experts, who at the same time will inform the other bodies that may be affected by the problem and the US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team).
Although the time of 90 days may seem a short time space to allow the developer of the code to fix a problem, a longer time frame will increase the risk to users, giving cybercriminals the opportunity to find the flaw for themselves and exploit it.
Nevertheless, Mr. Rohlf reports that: “We're keeping it right to extend or shorten said schedule based on circumstances such as for already exploitable vulnerabilities, or the existence of known threats”.
Cybercriminals are usually successful because they are constantly on the lookout for zero-day vulnerabilities that, until they are found out, they will have violated the victim or victims. Yahoo considers that it is taking a new dynamic stance against this practice which covers in addition to its own codes and the codes of the third parties it cooperates with.
Publishing vulnerability after 90 days depends on many factors, including the difficulty in dealing with the defect, which may sometimes take longer to release a patch. However, if there has been little or no progress since the discovery of the vulnerability, Yahoo reserves the right to notify it in order to force companies to take immediate defensive action or to prepare a patch.