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Just a reminder that Snyk was founded by ex-IDF Unit 8200 soldiers. I would not trust them given what we've seen Israel do to supply chains. https://en.wikiped

• kstrauser 2y ago
  I don't have a dog in this hunt. I've never worked with Snyk, I've never been a customer, and I don't think I even know anyone who works there. That said, they've built their whole company around being trustworthy and doubt they'd knowingly do anything to risk their entire business. Also, I can hardly imagine someone better positioned to protect against supply chain attacks. Your criticism sounds to me like "just a reminder that this armed bodyguard service comprises Navy SEALs and Army Rangers". Uh, great!
  • CuriouslyC 2y ago
    Maybe if you change that to "armed bodyguard services employ ex KGB assassins"
    • nullityrofl 2y ago
      I think you've missed the point: it's Americentric to assume that Navy SEALs and Army Rangers are inherently pure, good and have done nothing evil on behalf of the American government when we largely know that to be untrue.
      • kstrauser 2y ago
        That wasn't my point at all. The point was that often the best people to protect a resource are the ones who know how to attack it.
  • myth_drannon 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • RHSeeger 2y ago
      They just recently snuck bombs into a supply chain and then remotely detonated them in positions where the caused civilian injuries. I would assume the comment has nothing to do with religion/race, and everything to do with the actions taken. Even for someone that is a supporter of that government, it's hard to deny they've taken some actions that are unsupportable.
      • myth_drannon 2y ago
        How the hell that is connected to a private software company? Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, Intel is full of ex-8200.
      • lolinder 2y ago
        Who is "they"? Are we talking about Snyk? IDF Unit 8200? The IDF as a whole? The state of Israel? Jews in general? The reason why OP's comment feels like a racist dog whistle is because it's an enormous and dangerous generalization that seems to encompass an entire country. Israel has mandatory military service—if everyone who's ever served in the IDF is untrustworthy because they served in the IDF then you're by definition excluding nearly every Israeli citizen from trust. I guess that's not strictly antisemitism—maybe you're happy to trust Jews that don't live in Israel—but it's definitely an unsavory position to take.
        • Der_Einzige 2y ago
          It's not just the IDF, you have a CHOICE to join the spymaster side of it, vs being a regular grunt. That unit is part of Aman, the military version of Mossad.
          • lolinder 2y ago
            And why would choosing to be a grunt be more morally pure? I'm a techie, if I were forced into conscription I would absolutely choose an option that let me use computers over one that forced me to shoot a gun. There's no way on Earth I can hold it against a bunch of kids who were forced to make that choice that they chose the intelligence arm. And frankly, I have a hard time seeing how someone on this forum could hold that against them in good faith. Nearly everyone here would make the same call given that choice. If you think you wouldn't have, you're probably deluding yourself.
  • bbqfog 2y ago
    I have no downside to seeking alternatives. The pager incident ensured that I will always look for non-Israeli tech.
    • PoppinFreshDo 2y ago
      What pager incident?
      • mhitza 2y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device_attacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_devi...
        • PoppinFreshDo 2y ago
          Well, if the mossad put "made in israel" on those devices I doubt they would have worked.
      • defrost 2y ago
        The recent one in which Israeli techs compromised pager supply chains. It was very widely reported across the globe.
    • kstrauser 2y ago
      And what does that have to do with Snyk, other than that some of their employees use to work for IDF? I'm a US Navy veteran. Would you also stay away from my employers because they have veterans on staff? Seriously, I get what you're trying to say, but I don't understand the broader point you're trying to make. So Snyk has some ex-IDF employees. Find a high-profile infosec firm that doesn't. They military service they were compelled to has a reputation at being really, really good at infosec. I see no reason why companies shouldn't want to hire them afterward.
      • defrost 2y ago
        Without wanting to take a position here, the GP comment had a specific narrow point. The claim was that Snyk was founded by Unit 8200 members. Not that it had a few Israeli veterens, almost all Israeli's serve in the IDF after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 To be fair I have a former Unit 8200 member in my larger extended family who left and has since been vocal in opposition to Netanyahu so membership in an elite Cyber Unit alone doesn't define a person. That aside, most Governments would keep an eye on a company started by, say, former NSA employees and watch for covert activity under any overt actions.
  • xyzzy123 2y ago
    I'd give good odds it was a mistake by a staff member (or small group) who overstepped and was not part of any formal work. Most companies where I've worked as a security researcher, you get some time as part of your job to hack on random stuff to be able to generate interesting talks / research. This feels like that. This isn't a special cyber spooky practice, most pentesting companies do this to generate IP (rarely, lol), buzz (reasonably often) and keep the staff happy (this is really the main thing). It's rare for management to be fully across the scope of this.
  • manquer 2y ago
    I would say it is on similar to criticism of TikTok or Huwaei and China. It has less to do with whether it malicious intent from the start of building an organization for explicit intent of capturing core infra. It has more to do with how the Government of Israel operates and the legal requests they can make of their citizens and/or veterans. Perhaps concern over Israeli products should be probably higher than for China as Israel more well known incidents of exploits as a State actor like with Stuxnet, Pegasus or more recently with pagers etc. China no doubt has their own share of operations but they either have not used them as publicly in a large scale overt operation or been more discreet about it. Point is the concern is valid just as it would be valid for China.
    • kstrauser 2y ago
      You mean like how we found out that China attacked and pwn3d the entire US phone system? That’s not a shining example of discretion.
      • manquer 2y ago
        As the U.S. has done to our closest allies and their leaders, would be shocking and incompetent if they have not done much more in Russia and China and vice versa There is no equivalence intelligence gathering or gaining the capability for sabotage (which everyone does) versus actual active sabotage which today only Israel executes like with Stuxnet or with the pagers.
• lolinder 2y ago
  Just a reminder that Unit 8200 is staffed mostly by conscripts who are serving out their mandatory military service and chose to accept an invitation to serve in the cyberwarfare arm of the IDF instead of choosing to shoot guns. In other words, it's staffed by Israeli kids who made the choice most of us would have made under the circumstances. It seems a bit unfair to hold that against them more than 10 years later, no?
  • lmm 2y ago
    > In other words, it's staffed by Israeli kids who made the choice most of us would have made under the circumstances. It seems a bit unfair to hold that against them more than 10 years later, no? You could say the same about the guy in a call center in India trying to pull a tech support scam on you over the phone. Yes, he's probably making the best choice he can for his own livelihood, probably the same thing you would do in his position. No, that doesn't mean you should trust him. Just as you have to treat all Chinese companies as under control of the PRC government and all Australian companies as compromised by their security services, you have to treat all Israeli citizens as under the control of the Israeli military. Any adult can be conscripted and they have a history of disguising military operations as civilian ones. Someone might tell you they left the Israeli military 10 years ago and they're probably telling the truth, but if you make a habit of believing that statement you're going to get burned.
    • lolinder 2y ago
      > You could say the same about the guy in a call center in India trying to pull a tech support scam on you over the phone. Yes, he's probably making the best choice he can for his own livelihood, probably the same thing you would do in his position. No, that doesn't mean you should trust him. No, you can't, because the scammer in the call center is choosing that over thousands of other options. Are they choosing to maximize their pay? Maybe. But for every scammer there are thousands of Indians who show a different option. Choosing to dodge or resist the draft is totally different—very few people do it, and those who do get prison terms. If you sincerely believe that you'd have chosen to go to prison rather than be drafted, more power to you, but I and most others would aim to minimize the likelihood of ourselves dying and minimize the number of people I'd have to kill. For me that would have meant signing up for cyberwarfare, which in Israel would have meant Unit 8200. The rest of your comment is totally irrational fear-based speculation. Anti-Israel sentiment may not be antisemitic, but it sure shares the same tendency towards irrational fear and aggression.
• yard2010 2y ago
  Don't hate the player hate the game ;)
• krembo 2y ago
  That's absurd. If that's your claim, do you know how many of your daily tools and hardware you should also drop?
  • bbqfog 2y ago
    I’m dropping as many as I can as is my prerogative as a consumer.
    • krembo 2y ago
      Do you need some help with that? I'll be more than happy if antisemites like you won't be using any of the advanced tech we're working hard to create .
      • bbqfog 2y ago
        Sure, where do you work? I’ll be happy to add it to my list!
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
      • guappa 2y ago
        Ah the old trick of calling racism if you voice disagreement with a government… At this point people like you have made the word "antisemite" completely devoid of any meaning.
        • krembo 2y ago
          You are not criticizing the government but denying Israel's right to exists and protect itself, and this is the good ol' antisemitism with a brand new liberal mask.
          • guappa 2y ago
            The population of Gaza has LITERALLY been decimated in the past year (10% died). If you don't criticise this, you are a terrible human being. Genocide is bad also if you do it on dark skinned people, FYI.
• weatherlite 2y ago
  So every Israeli is now a Mossad agent and every customer is an enemy of Israel like Hezbollah? You won't buy from Snyk because you want to boycott Israel, just own up to it it's a popular position to take.
  • bbqfog 2y ago
    I’d put Unit 8200 and Mossad in the same basket. I think I made it clear I’m boycotting Israeli products, I’m not hiding that.
• Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  As the pager / radio terrorist attack showed, it's the Mossad involvement you don't know about that you should be worried about. Same with the CIA, they were behind "secure" radio communication in Europe for decades (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG) and nobody had any idea.