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I was one of the people that was there when it happened. My coworkers and I were asking one of them questions after the talk. The goons were kicking us out of t
by defcontalks 9y ago
I was one of the people that was there when it happened. My coworkers and I were asking one of them questions after the talk. The goons were kicking us out of the rooms because it was the last talk of the day and they wanted People to leave. We were talking in the hallway and asking him questions when we ran into the other presenter there(And people were asking him questions too). Anyway few mins later I see our old executive walk to them and tell them they have to talk. They started walking and talking but it was right in the open and you could pretty much hear them. They end up stopping and looks like they were trying to defend themselves. Few mins later the executive leaves and the end up walking back to the group that was still waiting to ask them questions (including us). They had been fired effective immediately.
The executive is Jim Alkove. He is a moron and our security org has completed revamped after he "left" to join other companies. All the recent advancements in Microsoft security/Win10 were because we no longer had a leader like him.
Feel sorry for these guys.
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoDo you know if these former employees reside in California or New York?
- defcontalks 9y agoThe one we were talking to had an Australian accent, but I did not ask. The other one is @fuzzynop and yes he's in California. He actually DJ'd for dualcore.
- agency 9y agoFTA: "Josh Schwartz, director of offensive security based in San Francisco, and John Cramb, senior offensive security engineer in Sydney, Australia, worked on the cloud giant's security 'red team'"
- tlogan 9y agoIn a large corporation I worked for a long time, if EVP fires somebody on the spot it means that EVP is next to go. I assume this will be the case for Salesforce.
- LateChannels 9y agoOn the spot, At defcon, 30k people. Anyone at Salesforce wanna talk about what's going on? Make a throwaway, use opsec. What are your opinions on this? What is your opinion of Jim as your leader?
- throwaway795463 9y agoThrowaway for obvious reasons. Incredibly bad leader. Ask away.
- provost 9y agoNo questions from me, but I've met Josh and the rest of the redteam. I hope they are doing well. Lots of good folks in salesforce security =)
- quantumhobbit 9y agoWere there any consequences for the leader? If not, it sounds like those above him are just as bad.
- aedron 9y agoOkay, umm... Why is he an incredibly bad leader?
- Quarrelsome 9y agowhat are this "leader"'s justifications for preventing the talks and for preventing the open sourcing of this software? Is it liability or competitive advantage based?
- placeybordeaux 9y agowhy are you still there?
- mygo 9y agoHow do we even know you work there?
- 9y ago
- droopybuns 9y agoI understand feeling sorry, but doing a talk like this without the full support of your leadership is an incredible error. If you work for a big company, you can't do talks like this without aligning pr, leadership etc.
- drawnwren 9y agoDid you read the article? Your comment suggests you didn't.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- honestoHeminway 9y agoDid you read the authoritarian spectre? Your deductions hint you didn't. Seriously - the guy above you would support anyone in power and talk down to anyone not in it.
- droopybuns 9y agoI read the article. Does the story they are presenting make sense to you? It doesn't to me! All that's left is to assume there is more to the story than what is written.
- uhhhhhhh 9y agoDid you? They didn't explicitly say the company signed off on the talk/presentation, just the project.
- Arcsech 9y agoFrom TFA: "Salesforce executives were first made aware of the project in a February meeting, and they had signed off on the project, according to one person with knowledge of the meeting." They had executive signoff until half an hour prior to the talk, and they didn't see the text revoking permission until after the talk. I'm not sure what else they were supposed to have done.
- koonsolo 9y agoI worked at a lot of companies under a lot of different managers. If I hear a manager fires them at such a moment, it already gives me an idea of what kind of manager we're talking about. If a manager sends a text message half an hour before the talk starts to not give the talk, I definitely know what kind of manager it is. You have 2 kinds of managers: The ones that think ahead of the time, and the ones that don't think ahead of the time. It's pretty easy to distinguish the two.
- toyg 9y agoYou forget the 3rd kind: the ones who think ahead of the time, but use urgency as a way of shielding their decision-making reasoning. Let's say Employee A comes up to Manager three months before Defcon, saying he'd like to do such and such. Manager doesn't like it, but he doesn't want to upset A at that time because Reasons. He says "sure bud, you go ahead, I'll check with the lawyers just in case and let you know if there is any problem". Then he waits, and half an hour before the talk, through an indirect medium like email or text, he goes "sorry man, I only just got a message back from the lawyers that you can't talk about that. Totally gutted! Oh well, better luck next year, uh?" 30 mins before the presentation, after they've all flown to the conference, is not incompetence; it's malice.
- _jdams 9y agoAt least in that case I wouldn't mind if a superior was honestly and truly checking with Legal Departments, and others of authority, to verify whether some action I was considering taking was going to cost me my job... Could any of us here really be upset about a Manager that does that?
- CleaveIt2Beaver 9y agoI'm fairly certain the implication here is that he was not, in fact, checking with Legal or anyone, but simply holding off to make it seem as if he was and it was too late to question.
- 9y ago
- newman314 9y agoIf this is true then I feel like I've avoided a bullet. Was looking at a position at SF that would have rolled up to him.
- calafrax 9y agoI am not sure that creating burner accounts to libel people by name is an entirely appropriate use of this site no matter what your personal feelings are. You don't have any evidence to substantiate any of what you are writing and this individual has no opportunity to respond to what you are writing. This is highly unprofessional behavior no matter what you think the justification is.
- burnme2345 9y agoIt's not libel unless it's proven FALSE. Statements from witness ARE evidence. What do you think evidence is? The "individual" could create an account here and respond if he wanted to. It would be stupid, but he definitely has an opportunity. And who told you anybody had to be professional on here?