The company Keeper develops password management software, and we had mentioned in a previous publication, not so flatteringly, since its software was found to have vulnerabilities that allow the theft of the credentials of the application's users.
The Chicago-based company, after the explosion of publications blaming its product, reportedly filed a lawsuit against the journalist who revealed the vulnerability.
Dan Goodin, who is Ars Technica's security editor, is named as a defendant in the lawsuit filed Tuesday by Keeper Security.
He is accused of making “false and misleading statements” about the company’s password manager.
Goodin's story, published on December 15, reported that Google security officer Tavis Ormandy had disclosed a vulnerability that allowed "any website to steal any password."
Goodin was one of the first to break the news about the vulnerability.
Keeper says in its lawsuit that Goodin and his employer, the website Ars Technica, which is also a defendant, “made false and misleading statements about the Keeper software application, suggesting that it had a 16-month-old bug that allowed websites to steal user passwords.”
The security company filed a defamation lawsuit and is also demanding the retraction and deletion of the article as well as compensation.
Of course, several security experts and researchers on Twitter condemned the lawsuit.
“It’s bullying and Goodin is [definitely] in the top 1 percent [of] experienced journalists,” Matthieu Suiche, founder of Comae Technologies, a Dubai-based security company, said in a tweet.
“If Keeper Security thinks this will make their software more secure, it will irreparably damage their reputation as a security company,” he added.
Kim Zetter, an independent security journalist, said in a tweet that the lawsuit is “ridiculous.”.
"It's a bad precedent for a security operation and a dishonest way to treat a journalist who has been covering security events for years," he added.
Let us mention that we highly doubt whether the outcome of the decision will be in Keeper's favor..
