Former RSA employee (Score 4, Interesting)

I worked at RSA from the late 90s thru the late 2000s, and was close to RSA Labs, though not in that group.

I am appalled.

RSA had, for a long time, an antagonistic relationship with the NSA; we wanted to push good crypto to the world, and the USG felt otherwise.

I knew the people involved, and I don't think any of the original RSA Labs (which was what the RSA Data Security Inc people became) would have compromised their integrity in this manner. What's more, BSAFE (the SW library compromised), became more or less a dead duck after 2000, when the patent on the RSA algorithm expired; free libraries such as BouncyCastle became much more viable.

After RSADSI was bought by Security Dynamics (which later renamed itself RSA Security), there was a gradual Borgification of RSA Labs, with it being assimilated more and more into the mother company (SecurID was always the main source of revenue, not RSA encryption).

I haven't been able to find the date at which the bribe took place, but 10 million seems very low. If Coviello approved this, I hope he's sued by stockholders.

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