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Security professionals withdraw from tech conference after NSA revelations
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/26/security-professionals-withdraw-from-tech-conference-after-nsa-revelations/Security professionals withdraw from tech conference after NSA revelations
By George Chidi
Thursday, December 26, 2013 13:10 EST
~snip~
If the allegations are true, a company thats sole purpose to build trust and thats what cryptography is and they cant be trusted, then I dont want to be part of that, Thomas said to Raw Story. Thomas, Chief Breaker of Atreidis Partners, had been lined up to speak at the annual RSA conference in February. The conference gathers computer security researchers to discuss the latest in cryptography and security.
But the RSA brand is radioactive territory after Reuters published accusations that the firm colluded with the NSA to market flawed encryption. The conference is separate from the company, he noted. They share a name and nothing else. To punish the conference for the company is probably not fair. The problem is that they do share a name. They are furthering the RSA brand. Everyone who gets on stage is furthering the credibility of the company.
~snip~
On December 20th, Reuters broke a story alleging that your company accepted a random number generator from the National Security Agency, and set it as the default option in one of the your products, in exchange of $10 million. Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim, Hypponen wrote in an open letter.
Eventually, NSAs random number generator was found to be flawed on purpose, in effect creating a back door. You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it. As my reaction to this, Im cancelling my talk at the RSA Conference USA 2014 in San Francisco in February 2014.
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Security professionals withdraw from tech conference after NSA revelations (Original Post)
unhappycamper
Dec 2013
OP
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)1. Mikko Hypponen's open letter announcing his withdrawal
(Note to mods: Published here in full as the author clearly wished to share it)
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002651.html
23rd of December 2013
An Open Letter to:
Joseph M. Tucci - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, EMC
Art Coviello - Executive Chairman, RSA
Dear Joseph and Art,
I dont expect you to know who I am.
Ive been working with computer security since 1991. Nowadays I do quite a bit of public speaking on the topic. In fact, I have spoken eight times at either RSA Conference USA, RSA Conference Europe or RSA Conference Japan. Youve even featured my picture on the walls of your conference walls among the 'industry experts'.
On December 20th, Reuters broke a story alleging that your company accepted a random number generator from the National Security Agency, and set it as the default option in one of your products, in exchange of $10 million. Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim. Eventually, NSAs random number generator was found to be flawed on purpose, in effect creating a back door. You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it.
As my reaction to this, Im cancelling my talk at the RSA Conference USA 2014 in San Francisco in February 2014.
Aptly enough, the talk I wont be delivering at RSA 2014 was titled "Governments as Malware Authors".
I dont really expect your multibillion dollar company or your multimillion dollar conference to suffer as a result of your deals with the NSA. In fact, I'm not expecting other conference speakers to cancel. Most of your speakers are American anyway why would they care about surveillance thats not targeted at them but at non-americans. Surveillance operations from the US intelligence agencies are targeted at foreigners. However Im a foreigner. And Im withdrawing my support from your event.
Sincerely,
Mikko Hypponen
Chief Research Officer
F-Secure
An Open Letter to:
Joseph M. Tucci - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, EMC
Art Coviello - Executive Chairman, RSA
Dear Joseph and Art,
I dont expect you to know who I am.
Ive been working with computer security since 1991. Nowadays I do quite a bit of public speaking on the topic. In fact, I have spoken eight times at either RSA Conference USA, RSA Conference Europe or RSA Conference Japan. Youve even featured my picture on the walls of your conference walls among the 'industry experts'.
On December 20th, Reuters broke a story alleging that your company accepted a random number generator from the National Security Agency, and set it as the default option in one of your products, in exchange of $10 million. Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim. Eventually, NSAs random number generator was found to be flawed on purpose, in effect creating a back door. You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it.
As my reaction to this, Im cancelling my talk at the RSA Conference USA 2014 in San Francisco in February 2014.
Aptly enough, the talk I wont be delivering at RSA 2014 was titled "Governments as Malware Authors".
I dont really expect your multibillion dollar company or your multimillion dollar conference to suffer as a result of your deals with the NSA. In fact, I'm not expecting other conference speakers to cancel. Most of your speakers are American anyway why would they care about surveillance thats not targeted at them but at non-americans. Surveillance operations from the US intelligence agencies are targeted at foreigners. However Im a foreigner. And Im withdrawing my support from your event.
Sincerely,
Mikko Hypponen
Chief Research Officer
F-Secure