Terms of Service

1. Who we are

Root Cause (“Root Cause”, “we”, “us”) is an educational publication operated by Root Cause Media Ltd. These terms govern your use of this website and the email newsletter. By using either, you agree to them. If you do not, please do not use the site.

2. Eligibility

The site is intended for a professional and general adult audience. You must be legally capable of entering into these terms in your jurisdiction. There is no account, no login, and no purchase.

3. What we provide

We publish written analyses (“teardowns”) of publicly disclosed software vulnerabilities and the on-chain events associated with them, together with a self-audit checklist. Access to the website is free. The newsletter is free and is sent when a new teardown is published.

Some teardowns are marked as illustrative samples. These describe fictional protocols and fictional events, are labelled as such on the page, and must not be read as accounts of real incidents.

4. What we do not provide

Root Cause is not investment advice and nothing on this site is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, token, or security. Root Cause is not a security audit, does not certify or endorse the safety of any codebase, protocol, or organisation, and creates no client, advisory, or fiduciary relationship. We do not offer paid audits, reviews, or consulting to any party involved in an incident we cover.

5. The newsletter

If you submit your email address, we use it to send you teardowns and nothing else. There is no payment and no subscription fee. You may unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email, or by writing to us; we will remove your address promptly.

6. Your responsibilities

You agree not to:

• use the material here to attack, probe, or interfere with any system you do not own or are not authorised to test;
• republish a teardown in full without attribution and a link to the original page;
• misrepresent an illustrative sample as an account of a real event;
• scrape, overload, or otherwise disrupt the site or its infrastructure.

You remain solely responsible for the security of any code you write, deploy, or operate. The self-audit checklist is a prompt for your own review; it is not exhaustive and it is not a substitute for a professional security review.

7. Intellectual property

The text, layout, and design of this site belong to Root Cause Media Ltd. Code snippets shown for educational purposes remain the property of their respective authors and are reproduced for commentary and analysis. You may quote from a teardown with attribution.

8. Limitation of liability

The site is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all warranties and are not liable for any loss — including financial loss, loss of funds or digital assets, loss of profits, or loss of data — arising from your use of, or reliance on, anything published here. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

9. Third-party links

Teardowns may link to block explorers, source repositories, and public disclosures operated by others. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content or availability.

10. Changes

We may update these terms. The “last updated” date above always reflects the current version; continued use of the site after a change means you accept it.

11. Contact

Root Cause Media Ltd
Unit 4, 128 Ashwin Street
London E8 3DL
United Kingdom
+44 20 7946 0812
editor@readrootcause.com