More security researchers are pulling out of next month's RSA security conference in protest of recent revelations that the event's namesake, EMC-owned subsidiary RSA, received $10 million to make an NSA-favored random number generator the default setting in its BSAFE crypto tool.
By Tuesday afternoon, there were eight previously scheduled RSA participants who had publicly cancelled their engagements. They included Adam Langley and Chris Palmer, both on various security teams at Google; Chris Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union; EFF special counsel Marcia Hoffman; Mozilla Global Privacy and Public Policy Leader Alex Fowler; Josh Thomas, who is listed as "chief breaking officer" at Atredis Partners; and Jeffrey Carr, CEO of security consultancy Taia Global. They joined F-Secure Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen, who announced his plans to withdraw two weeks ago.
"I've become convinced that a public stance serves more than self-aggrandizement, so I've pulled out of the Cryptographers Panel at RSA 2014," Langley wrote on Twitter Tuesday. "(I had already decided not to do it, but I pondered for a while whether I should say anything in public)," he wrote in a follow-up tweet.
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