We, Swisscom Ltd and our affiliated companies (hereinafter "Swisscom") aim to design and operate our products and services according to the highest security standards to keep our customers safe. To this end, we are continually improving our security on multiple levels. We are aware that, despite all efforts, absolute security is impossible, and we cannot completely rule out the existence of security bugs. The purpose of the Swisscom Vulnerability Disclosure Policy and Bug Bounty Programme is to support the reporting of potential vulnerabilities in our systems by external parties.
Customers, users, researchers, partners and any other parties who interact with Swisscom's products and services are encouraged to report identified vulnerabilities to our security team under observance of our Responsible Disclosure Policy.
Moreover, we invite both private individuals and legal entities to participate in our Bug Bounty Programme (hereinafter the "Programme") in accordance with the Programme Rules. Bounties may be awarded for reporting qualifying and in-scope vulnerabilities.
Swisscom acknowledges the value of contributions from the security researcher community and highly appreciates the efforts made by the reporting party. We thank you in advance for your contribution!
TL;DR Swisscom Bug Bounty
- Public programme
- Scope includes all enterprise assets
- Rewards from CHF 100 to CHF 10'000
- Safe Harbor Policy
- In-house triage by Swisscom team
To take part in our Bug Bounty Programme, please register and submit your report directly on our portal. See 5.4.1 Registration.
To report a security vulnerability to Swisscom without participation in the Bug Bounty Programme or for any other enquiries, please contact us by e-mail.
| bug.bounty@swisscom.com | |
| PGP key ID | D7DD5D676F08666B |
| PGP fingerprint | 32C7 3D84 51B9 0D71 F966 1FD3 D7DD 5D67 6F08 666B |
| PGP public key | Public key |
| Portal link | Bug Bounty Portal |
| Postal address |
Swisscom (Switzerland) Ltd GSE-SEL Bug Bounty Programme Förrlibuckstrasse 60/62 CH-8005 Zürich Switzerland |
To protect our customers, Swisscom does not publicly disclose or confirm security vulnerabilities until Swisscom has conducted an analysis of the reported vulnerability and issued fixes and/or mitigations in its Products or Services.
By submitting a vulnerability report (hereinafter "Report") to Swisscom, you agree to not publicly disclose or share the reported vulnerability with any third party until Swisscom confirms that the vulnerability has been remediated. Swisscom will make every effort to remedy reported vulnerabilities within 90 days after notification of your Report to Swisscom. Swisscom must be informed in advance about your intended publications and their content. The publication must NOT include any customer, confidential or sensitive data, and must focus on the technical vulnerability discovered.
In the event of publication, Swisscom and you shall mutually agree on a coordinated disclosure.
If you submit a Report which affects a third-party service, we will limit the information that we share with any affected third party. We may share non-identifying content from your report with an affected third party. We will not share your identifying information with any affected third party without first obtaining your written permission.
The Swiss Penal Code qualifies any type of hacking as a major crime. This provision makes sure that you are safe from demands for a criminal sanction of Swisscom if you comply with the Programme Rules. If you violate these Rules, you may not only be prohibited from participating in the Programme in the future, but Swisscom also reserves the right to file criminal charges or take civil action against you.
Please understand that Swisscom cannot and does not authorise security research that involves any customer assets (networks, systems, applications, products or services) managed by Swisscom in an outsourcing setting. If your security research involves assets that include data of a third party, such third party may take civil actions or file criminal charges against you. Swisscom cannot in any way offer to defend, indemnify or otherwise protect you from third-party claims or criminal charges against you.
If you comply with the Programme Rules, Swisscom will honour its Safe Harbour Policy, as defined below:
- Swisscom interprets activities that comply with these Programme Rules as authorised access to our systems and will refrain from filing a complaint under Articles 143, 143bis and 144bis of the Swiss Criminal Code.
- If a criminal charge or legal action is initiated against you and you have complied fully with the Programme Rules, Swisscom will make every effort to inform the authorities that your actions were conducted in compliance with Swisscom’s Bug Bounty Programme.
For more information regarding legal aspects of ethical hacking in Switzerland, refer to the FDPIC Factsheet for ethical hackers.
Swisscom was the first company in Switzerland to introduce a Bug Bounty Programme (hereinafter "Programme"), which has been up and running since 2015. The Programme continues to be distinguished for its openness today:
- Open participation for the global community of security researchers
- Open scope including all enterprise assets
- Open-ended, unlimited duration
The programme is self-managed, offers a wide range of technologies and vulnerability reports are triaged in-house by Swisscom employees.
Participants are permitted to perform tests and investigations within the systems provided they act in good faith and respect the scope and rules described below.
You are eligible to participate in the Programme if you meet all of the following criteria:
- You are of legal age and have the legal capacity to give your consent to the terms of these Programme Rules.
- If you are acting in the name of and on behalf of your employer, you must clearly state this during the Registration Process and confirm that you are authorised to give your consent to the terms of these Programme Rules in the name of and on behalf of your employer. You are responsible for reviewing your employer's rules for participating in this Programme. Swisscom disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for disputes arising between you and your employer related to this matter.
- Public Sector Employee: if you are a public sector employee, please contact our Bug Bounty team using the details above prior to any testing activities
You are not eligible to participate in the Programme if you meet any of the following criteria:
- You do not fulfil all the above criteria
- You are a resident or a national of any country subject to international or Swiss sanctions
- You are a resident or a national of any country that does not allow participation in this type of Programme
- You are currently an employee of Swisscom, or an immediate family or household member of such an employee
- Within the six months prior to providing us your Submission, you were an employee of Swisscom
- You currently (or within six months prior to providing us your Submission) perform services for Swisscom or a Swisscom subsidiary in an external staff capacity that requires access to the Swisscom Network, such as agency temporary worker, vendor employee, contractor
In principle, any Swisscom-owned assets are intended to be within the scope of the Programme. This includes almost all networks, systems, applications, products or services for which Swisscom is accountable.
Likewise, assets from affiliated companies are also in scope if Swisscom Ltd owns more than 50% of the company shares. You can find a list of such participations in the current annual report under Group Companies. However, certain exceptions apply; for example, Fastweb SpA is explicitly out of scope.
Swisscom's customer systems or customer systems outsourced to Swisscom are explicitly out of scope.
A non-exhaustive list of assets is maintained here as an authoritative source of the programme scope. Participants must ensure to restrict their research and testing activities as defined in the in-scope and out-of-scope lists. Note that items in the out-of-scope list take precedence over the in-scope items. Testing on non-declared or out-of-scope assets will be viewed as a violation of the Programme Rules and any report on such will be disregarded. If a Swisscom asset is missing from the list, please contact the Bug Bounty team to validate and extend the scope accordingly.
Any design, implementation or configuration issue that substantially affects confidentiality or integrity is likely to be eligible for a reward. Please refer to vulnerabilities for details.
The Rules of the Swisscom Bug Bounty Programme as defined in this document (hereinafter the "Programme Rules") govern the entire agreement between Swisscom and the participants (hereinafter "you") concerning the Swisscom Bug Bounty Programme.
By participating in the Programme in any manner, you accept these Programme Rules. The Programme Rules may be changed unilaterally by Swisscom at any time. By participating in the Programme, you accept the Programme Rules applicable at that time. If you do not agree, you are not entitled to participate in the Programme. Swisscom reserves the right to terminate or discontinue the Programme at its discretion.
To participate in the Swisscom Bug Bounty Programme you must register an account via our Bug Bounty Portal. Reports submitted via any other channel will be disregarded. In order to receive bounty payments, you will be required to provide:
- your name and postal address
- a copy of an identity document (e.g. passport or ID card)
- your bank details (see also Payment modalities)
- You must avoid tests that could impair, interrupt or otherwise damage Swisscom services, services owned by Swisscom customers or other third parties.
- You must avoid tests that could compromise, destroy or otherwise damage Swisscom data, data owned by Swisscom customers or other third parties.
- You are expected to take all necessary technical and organisational measures to minimise the impact of your testing activity. For example, make sure you know what you are doing when using automated tools and limit your requests per second. Refrain from conducting tests that involve spamming web forms or triggering reservations.
- If you assume that the availability of a tested system was impaired due to your testing activities despite all precautions taken, please inform the Bug Bounty Team immediately.
- You must report any detected vulnerabilities exclusively to Swisscom through our portal. You must refrain from disclosing vulnerabilities to third parties, including customers of Swisscom that may be affected.
- You must not publicly disclose any discovered credentials (e.g. passwords, tokens, API keys, etc).
- Any obtained or downloaded data must not be disclosed to third parties and may not be used for any purpose other than reporting the vulnerability to Swisscom under this Programme.
- Any obtained or downloaded data must be irrevocably erased from your systems immediately after reporting the vulnerability to Swisscom.
- You must refrain from interfering with other participants’ work when searching for vulnerabilities.
- You must refrain from interfering with any devices or accounts from other Swisscom customers or third parties.
- You must limit the amount of data accessed to a strict minimum.
- You are expected to access the minimal amount of data necessary to prove the existence of a vulnerability.
If you happen to find yourself in a customer system managed by Swisscom, if you identify data that does not belong to Swisscom or if you have doubts about the type of system (Swisscom or customer) you are searching in, please stop further research in the system immediately and contact the Bug Bounty Team.
Any social engineering techniques such as phishing, smishing or vishing are forbidden.
You are expected to comply with all laws applicable to you.
- You must refrain from any misuse of Swisscom services, e.g. for sending unsolicited bulk email, postings, contact requests, SMS (text messages), instant messaging, etc.
- You are not allowed to register duplicate accounts on the Bug Bounty portal.
Use only official communication channels as defined on the Swisscom Bug Bounty website.
Swisscom expects you to comply with the following standards of behaviour when participating in the Programme. If you violate these standards, you may be prohibited from participating in the Programme in the future and any submissions you have provided may be deemed to be ineligible for Bounty payments.
- No abusive language or harassment: we do not engage in and will not tolerate any form of threats, profanity and hateful speech, discrimination based on ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual or gender identity or orientation, as well as age, level of experience or personal appearance.
- Do not engage in any form of reputation-damaging behaviours or activities targeted at creating an unfair reputational advantage or rewards.
- Do not engage in any activity that exploits people, harms people or risks harming people.
- Do not share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, graphic violence or criminal activity).
- Do not engage in any activity that is false or misleading.
- Do not engage in any activity that is harmful to you, the Programme or others (e.g., transmission of viruses, stalking, posting of terrorist content, communicating hate speech or advocating violence against others).
- Do not infringe upon the rights of others (e.g., unauthorised sharing of copyrighted material) or engage in activity that violates the privacy of others.
- Do not cause harm to Swisscom or to our customers, do not attempt to access our offices, data centres or any user accounts other than your own.
- Do not help others to break these rules.
To support our triage process your report must contain all the information required for us to confirm the vulnerability. This includes:
- All information required to identify the affected asset
- The type of security vulnerability
- A clear and comprehensible description of the vulnerability along with step-by-step instructions to reproduce a potential exploitation. Include attachments such as screenshots, HTTP traffic logs or proof-of-concept code, as necessary.
- In order for us to identify your requests in the logs, please
provide indicators of your activity such as your source IP address along
with a time frame and any other distinctive identifiers, where
applicable. For example:
- Set a distinctive reverse DNS entry for your IP address
- Append the string
-bugbounty-<username>to the User-Agent header for HTTP requests
- You are expected to share all details about the discovered vulnerability. To prevent withholding of information in the initial report, bypasses in subsequent reports originating from the same participant and regarding the same vulnerability will be accepted only after 30 days. Bypasses reported during the verification phase are accepted and rewarded.
Monetary Rewards (hereinafter “Bounties”) for Reports may be awarded at Swisscom's full discretion. The awarded bounties range from CHF 100 to CHF 10'000. The Bug Bounty team determines the Bounty amount based on
- the technical impact of the reported vulnerability
- the business criticality of the impacted system or data
- the quality of the documentation provided to Swisscom
In general, rewards will be paid after remediation of the vulnerability, and you will be asked to validate the remediation measures.
The following requirements for awarding a Bounty apply:
- The vulnerability must affect an in-scope asset (see Programme Scope) and must qualify for the Programme (see Qualifying Vulnerabilities).
- You must be the first reporter of the vulnerability.
- Reports on vulnerabilities having the same root cause (remediation in a single point, e.g. same backend system, same code base, etc), as well as enumeration of identical vulnerabilities may be treated as a single report.
To ensure that you receive any Bounties to which you are entitled, please note the following prior to participation in the Programme:
- Rewards are paid out in Swiss francs (CHF) by bank transfer only. Any other payment channels are excluded.
- You must hold a bank account in your own or your company's name. Payments to entities other than the reporter are not allowed for legal reasons.
- It will only be possible to award Bounties if you meet the payment modality requirements
Upon request, Swisscom may issue an invoice in your/your company's name.
Bounty Payments shall be due net within 30 days of confirmation of payment. The Bounty, if any, shall cover all services provided by you, including the costs for your Bug Bounty activities, documentation, any expenses and incidental costs, and licence fees. If, for any reason, you are unable or unwilling to receive your Bounty, we reserve the right to rescind it.
You/your company will be responsible for your own taxes levied to the respective party as legal taxpayer in accordance with the applicable local law. Each party shall bear its own income, withholding, sales, service, value-added, use, excise, consumption and any other taxes and duties.
Swisscom may publicly recognise individuals who have reported considerable vulnerabilities under the Programme and been awarded Bounties.
Swisscom may, at its discretion, give you recognition on websites or other printed materials, unless you explicitly ask us not to include your name.
When participating in the Programme, you may provide information originating from private research about vulnerabilites and exploitation techniques. Your report may be forwarded to any Swisscom employee, contractor, supplier, partner, or vendor on a need-to-know basis with the goal of remediating the reported issue. As such, all recipients gain an informational advantage, which is at risk of misuse or misappropriation. This policy aims to establish a standard for Swisscom employees when handling such information. While we cannot enforce this policy with third-party entities (e.g. suppliers, vendors, etc.), our commitment to prevent abuse involves sharing only essential information and treating it as confidential.
As long as the provided information is unavailable to the general public (i.e. the report is not yet disclosed, no vulnerability details have been published, no CVE has been assigned, no security advisory has been issued, etc) and your report has been closed for less than three months:
- Swisscom employees will refrain from disclosing the information provided in reports (specific payloads, code, custom-built tools, etc.) to any third-party without a need-to-know requirement.
- In particular, Swisscom employees will not misuse the information for personal financial gain (e.g. participation in bug bounty programs, sale to vulnerability brokers, etc).
Upon your registration as reporter for the Program, you must agree to these Program Rules and enter into a Bug Bounty Agreement with the terms of these Program Rules with Swisscom.
The reporter provides independent advisory services with checking the digital security precautions and measures at Swisscom (advisory activities). In this connection, Swisscom has no authority to issue instructions or to monitor the reporter.
The reporter organizes and provides his services in this context according to his own organizational considerations and on his own professional and entrepreneurial responsibility, in particular with reference to the determination of the place of performance and the hours of activity. The reporter decides freely and independently how the service is provided.
The reporter uses his own working tools (computer, mobile phone, tablet, printer, etc.) to provide the services. The reporter is not entitled to any compensation in this regard. In any case, Swisscom is entitled to all (work) results including the technical database and processing methods in connection with and / or resulting from the advisory activity in accordance with this agreement.
This agreement applies from the time the advisor agrees to it.
Should the reporter or Swisscom no longer wish to cooperate based on this agreement at a future point in time, the corresponding cooperation can be terminated at any time, unless this occurs at an inopportune time (i.e. a point in time that would have significant negative consequences for one of the partners).
By agreeing to this agreement, the reporter confirms that he is also working for other clients.
The client can pay a success-related fee for the consulting activity, the amount of which is at the discretion of the client. Relevant criteria can be the topicality and the respective news content for the client. There is no legal entitlement to a fee.
The use of subcontractors or other third parties by the reporter is not permitted.
The reporter is obliged to comply with all data protection provisions and applicable data protection regulations within the scope of his activity and applies the necessary care to protect data.
Data protection violations detected by the reporter must be reported to the client immediately.
In particular, the reporter must observe the data protection regulations and instructions of Swisscom. Deficits in the Swisscom security system discovered by the reporter must be reported to the client immediately.
The reporter is also obliged to maintain data secrecy in all of his activities for the client. Specifically, this means that the reporter keeps all information, data and personal data known or entrusted to him secret and does not pass it on to third parties.
In addition to maintaining data secrecy and secrecy, there are further confidentiality obligations (such as the maintenance of business and trade secrets, see point 5) that must be observed.
The abstract naming of a system vulnerability found is expressly not covered by the data secrecy and the obligation to secrecy. However, the designation of the reporter may only be made after the removal by the client.
If the reporter has the opportunity to access personal data or particularly sensitive personal data, the reporter shall notify Swisscom immediately in writing by email (Contact: bug.bounty@swisscom.com) or via our portal.
The reporter is obliged to keep all data, personal data and information received in connection with his consulting activity confidential and not to pass them on to third parties.
The abstract naming of a system vulnerability found is expressly not covered by the obligation of secrecy. However, the name may only be given after Swisscom has remedied the vulnerability.
In addition, the reporter is obliged to treat business and manufacturing secrets known to him confidentially and not to pass them on to third parties. The duty of confidentiality remains in place even after the consultation contract has ended.
The reporter undertakes under no circumstances to establish direct or indirect contact and communication with the customers and customers of the customer.
After completing his consulting work, the reporter will return in full all physical and digital documents, documents and data that he received in the course of fulfilling this consulting contract. Copies of documents, data and documents may not be made.
The reporter is solely responsible for the correct taxation of fees received. In the event that the payments are subject to VAT, the client shows the VAT and the VAT is paid by the client.
The reporter furthermore guarantees that he will independently pay all (social) insurance contributions as well as all taxes and duties required by the applicable legislation for the provision of the advisory activity. At the request of the client, the reporter will provide evidence of having met these obligations.
Swisscom is not claiming any ownership rights to your report. However, by providing any report to Swisscom, you:
- grant Swisscom the following non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, royalty free, worldwide, sub-licensable license to the intellectual property in your report (i) to use, review, assess, test, and otherwise analyze your report; (ii) to reproduce, modify, distribute, display and perform publicly, and commercialize and create derivative works of your report and all its content, in whole or in part; and (iii) to feature your report and all of its content in connection with the marketing, sale, or promotion of this Program or other programs (including internal and external sales meetings, conference presentations, tradeshows, and screen shots of the Report in press releases) in all media (now known or later developed);
- agree to sign any documentation that may be required for us or our designees to confirm the rights you granted above;
- understand and acknowledge that Swisscom may have developed or commissioned materials similar or identical to your Report, and you waive any claims you may have resulting from any similarities to your report;
- understand that you are not guaranteed any compensation or credit for use of your report; and
- represent and warrant that your report is your own work, that you haven't used information owned by another person or entity, and that you have the legal right to provide the report to Swisscom.
The reporter has to name a bank account for the processing. It is essential that the reporter himself, as an individual, is the recipient of the payment. If the reporter names a company account, he/she must be named as recipient. The use of a company account for this private purpose is in the responsibility of the reporter. He/she must obtain the appropriate permission from the respective company. Swisscom is not obliged to do so.
Changes and additions to this agreement, including this provision, are only possible by means of a written agreement signed by both parties.
Should any provision of this consultancy agreement be invalid or unenforceable, this shall not affect the validity of the remaining provisions of this agreement. The invalid or unenforceable provision is to be replaced by a valid provision that comes as close as possible to the economic purpose of the invalid or unenforceable provision.
This agreement is subject to Swiss substantive law. The exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from or in connection with this consulting contract is the Swisscom headquarters. Mandatory places of jurisdiction are reserved.