[Dailydave] RSA Email 2: The Anti-Feds

[Dave Aitel]

It's impossible to look across the Large Booth RSA Expo Floor and not
see the balkanization of security with new eyes. On one side, Sophos
(Spanish), on the other, Trend Micro (Japanese). In the middle Kaspersky
(RU), Symantec (US), Intel (US), Qualys (US/EU), BAE (UK), Raytheon
(US), Microsoft (US).

I had a brief conversation with a couple Kaspersky researchers in the
hallway. They were like "Yes, the next Kaspersky SAS Con is going to be
held in a Banya <https://banya.kaspersky.com/>! Hahahaha!" To be honest
it reminded me of that scene in The Princess Bride where the little bald
dude laughs as he drinks the poison only to fall dead
<https://youtu.be/U_eZmEiyTo0?t=216>a few seconds later, mid chortle. 
But this is at some level less about the particulars of Kaspersky's
denial and more about ANY company trying to penetrate ANY foreign market
in this environment.

Huawei, which if it was an RPG character would have overflowed the
counter for available gold pieces, had a booth where the only people
talking in English were the head of their European research team (5
people strong!) and a salesguy from EdgeWave, which is now selling
co-branded Huawei devices in the US market. In the meantime I hear
rumors that one of the requirements for the Time Warner Cable and
Comcast deal to have gone through (it did not) was the ripping out of
1.5Billion USD of Huawei equipment. "It's not protectionist behavior if
someone's really after you!" you can hear them say.

When I went to the Huawei booth to watch
<https://twitter.com/daveaitel/status/590583359421685761>their slideshow
<https://twitter.com/daveaitel/status/590584064907812864>it was just
<https://twitter.com/daveaitel/status/590584855836160001>me and two
probable-HUMINT guys, dutifully taking a picture of every slide for later.

The NSA had their own giant booth a few doors down, where they, as they
do every year, showed off an Enigma. I'm not sure if the understated
message is simply "To us, all your giant flat screens showing off
big-data-behavioral-analysis-endpoint-protection look a lot like this
little typewritery gadget here. Clicky clicky!" It may be also, "There's
no sane reason for us to have a booth nearly this expensive, but we do!"
just like everyone else.

It is hard to avoid the fact that the new White House cyber-related
sanctions list is about to come out and seriously put the hammer to a
few big companies on that expo floor and of course, every other country
(*cough* China *cough*) will have to follow suit. My question to myself
walking around was whether they were all smart enough to be scared.

-dave



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