Security Experts Ditch RSA Conference Over NSA Report

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http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2429282,00.asp?mailingID=E151D0CED6990CB72C16A77BA0025750

A handful of security experts have bowed out of the February 2014 RSA Conference amidst recent allegations that RSA colluded with the National Security Agency.

Following December reports that the government agency paid $10 million to the RSA to create a "back door" into protected data, at least eight analysts said they would not attend the conference, citing disapproval of NSA's alleged misconduct.

According to the Wall Street Journal, those speakers include: Mikko Hyppӧnen, F-Secure chief research officer; Christopher Soghoian, American Civil Liberties Union senior policy analyst; Josh Thomas, a partner at Atredis Partners; and Jeffrey Carr, chief executive of Taia Global.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, added to that lineup Google software security engineer Chris Palmer and senior staff software engineer Adam Langley, as well as digital rights lawyer Marcia Hofmann and Mozilla's Alex Fowler.

Hyppӧnen was among the first to pull out, explaining in a Dec. 23 open letter to the RSA and EMC chiefs that he will not deliver his talk—ironically titled "Governments as Malware Authors."

"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," the Finnish security researcher said. "In fact, I'm not expecting other conference speakers to cancel."

But cancel they did: Palmer, Carr, Soghoian, Thomas, and Langley all took to Twitter to announce their plan.

Reports of a partnership between RSA and the NSA surfaced in late December, alleging that the NSA paid $10 million to the security software provider to create a "back door" in its encryption products that would give the agency access to protected RSA data.

Days later, the company "categorically" denied that it knowingly incorporated a flawed formula for generating random numbers in its BSAFE product as part of a contract with the NSA. But it did not directly deny that $10 million exchanged hands.

The RSA news comes from the data dump by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. That also impacted another high-profile conference: last summer, organizers of the annual Defcon conference rescinded their invitation to federal authorities.

"When it comes to sharing and socializing with feds, recent revelations have made many in the community uncomfortable about this relationship," organizers said in July, calling a "time-out" for the government, which had made many appearances at Defcon in the years prior.

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