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F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen Cancels RSA Talk In Protest
An anonymous reader writes "In a letter to RSA executives, F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen says he is canceling his talk at the 2014 RSA Conference, due to the company's deal with the NSA, and how the agency has treated foreigners."
From the letter: "
I don’t 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 that’s not targeted at them but at non-americans. Surveillance operations from the U.S. intelligence agencies are targeted at foreigners. However I’m a foreigner. And I’m withdrawing my support from your event."
As an American, I am giving my moral support to Mr. Hyppone for his courage to speak up against the unspeakable and despicable things that NSA has done !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Hypponnen needs better news sources.
As an american, I don't believe for one second that it's not targeted at us, too. Mr. Hypponen has my support, as well.
Let me just say that, by far, most of us Americans *do* care about the surveillance going on in our country. And we're horrified by it.
Good for Mikko for taking a stand. Unfortunately, the NSA was monitoring Americans as well as foreigners, they just had to obfuscate their spying on American Citizens because it's illegal for them to target Americans without secret court permission.
The bottom line is that the world is no longer confident about software written in the US, and will seek alternatives sourced from Europe, Russia, China and elsewhere to regain the security and privacy which they believe they have lost.
The NSA will be directly responsible for a shift away from US standards, US software and US protocols ... because without confidence, those standards, software and protocols don't mean a damn thing. RSA, by simply going along with the NSA has damaged its brand name, possibly irreparably.
RSA has categorically denied that they cut a deal with the NSA. But Mr. Hypponen and the rest of the internet has declared them guilty based on unseen evidence. How is that fair?
First, no one said that life was fair. Secondly, RSA didn't categorically deny anything. Go parse their statement carefully. They've denied a specific scenario with several criteria, that's it.
I support anyone that's willing to hit the breaks these days. Without people, nothing can succeed, nothing at all. If the only card we have to play - in this world of bullshit, lies and damn lies - is non-participation, then we have to play it. To keep going on like "everything is just what it is and there's nothing that we can do to change it" is to play into the continuation of the problem. To see others acting upon this truth is heart-warming and gives hope to others that are doing it.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
RSA has categorically denied that they cut a deal with the NSA. But Mr. Hypponen and the rest of the internet has declared them guilty based on unseen evidence. How is that fair?
You can expect that to become a trend. The NSA has well and truly fucked over the entire American IT security industry. Even ultra-low-end "security" products like home broadband routers have become suspect, thanks to their interference.
Fair? No. Obvious consequence of the NSA's actions? Absolutely. People haven't trusted them for decades - Anyone remember Tempest? Or the improved S-Boxes that made DES more resistant to an attack that wouldn't exist for another 25 years? But in the back of our minds, we always told ourselves they might count as completely scary bastards, but at least they counted as our completely scary bastards. Now we know better - They have zero regard for US law and work for no one but themselves.
On a positive note, I'd still rather see the TSA disbanded first. But at this point, they both need to go.
Then again, this just follows a loooong history of ineffective, illegal, self-serving "intelligence" agencies in the US, from Hoover's FBI to Bush-the-elder's CIA to our current situation, you'd think we'd eventually learn and say "no more". Sadly, most people don't even have a clue we have a problem, or worse, outright support giving up our freedoms if it will protect us from the evil brown people across the sea.
Pathetic, the whole lot of us.
As symbolic as this is, It's worth pointing out that the RSA Conference and RSA Security are two separate corporate entities (and I worked with both, producing RSA Security's own booth content at RSA Conference 2011). They do however, all funnel back up to EMC (y'know.. the world's largest storage systems corporation).
RSA has categorically denied that they cut a deal with the NSA. But Mr. Hypponen and the rest of the internet has declared them guilty based on unseen evidence. How is that fair?
Oh no you didn't...
RSA was aware that the Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator (Dual EC DRBG) had been back doored since 2007,
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/12/23/0357228/rsa-flatly-denies-that-it-weakened-crypto-for-nsa-money?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
They waited an ample 5 years before they warned that it shouldn't be used.
http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/09/21/2143250/rsa-warns-developers-not-to-use-rsa-products
I'm sure they just wanted to double check their findings first.
BTW here's Mikko's recent TED talk on the topic if you haven't seen it yet.
Not quite.
They denied a "secret contract" to incorporate a known flawed RNG into BSAFE.
They did NOT deny a secret contract to incorporate DRBG.
If they did not know, at the time they made the deal that the RNG was flawed, then they could truthfully claim they did not knowingly take money to incorporate a known flawed RNG.
The pedant in me would like them to categorically deny any link between the $10million and incorporating Dual EC DBRG.
They didn't actually do that.
Given just how much scrutiny they KNEW their statement would be put under; and the fact that their lawyers would have reviewed the thing before it going up, it is striking that so many news sources are identifying it as a dodge rather than a head o denial.
Here's another article...
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/23/5237788/rsa-nsa-backdoor-non-denial
Its hard to believe, again, given just how much scrutiny they KNEW their statement would be under, that the lack of certainty was anything but calculated.