Salesforce fires red team staffers who gave Defcon talk
I was not at the conference and have no first hand knowledge of what happened.<p>But before everyone gets on their high horse, please pause to reflect:<p>This was all company work product being presented by company employees who were on a company funded conference trip. Therefore there is an approval process for vetting presentations as well as a legal process for opensourcing code. This is standard practice at all companies.<p>Now what do you think is more likely: That the PR department would approve of a talk titled &quot;meatpistol&quot; (FIXED) (have you seen the slides?) and the legal dept would approve of open sourcing the code and then at the very last minute both groups would change their mind and try to pull the talk, or that the presenters never got the OK in the first place, the company found out at the last minute, asked them to pull the talk and they refused?<p>How likely is it that they would get official approval for their talk under a &quot;Chatham&#x27;s rules&quot; meeting in February to for a presentation &lt;strike&gt;in August&lt;&#x2F;strike&gt;at the end of July? Isn&#x27;t it more likely that they got some initial approval for a talk in February, but that PR still wanted to vet the actual slides in &lt;strike&gt;August&lt;&#x2F;strike&gt;July? (I&#x27;m assuming that the slides were made after February.) Which PR department gives approvals like that? What legal department works this way? In my experience, stuff like this happens at the last minute, because that&#x27;s when you&#x27;re finishing your slides (as well as your code), and generally PR is going to ask that you make some changes to your slides and they will want the final copy before signing off. Now maybe I&#x27;m wrong and the article is correct, but I think it&#x27;s unlikely.<p>Moreover given that Salesforce can&#x27;t talk about this matter, who do you think is the source for the article and whose side are you hearing?<p>The last few days have really highlighted how quick people are to pile on with outrage and self-righteous indignation before getting all the facts.