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.
Your criticism sounds to me like "just a reminder that this armed bodyguard service comprises Navy SEALs and Army Rangers". Uh, great!
It was very widely reported across the globe.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dresden was a war crime and played no part in winning the war. Same with the atomic bombs.
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.
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.
No, they're the people who don't have other options (because they lack the skills and/or qualifications and/or are discriminated against). It's not malice, it's just desperation to get money to live on (or, often, to provide for people who depend on them). But of course the end result is the same.
> The rest of your comment is totally irrational fear-based speculation.
Entirely rational given the historical pattern of behaviour shown by the Israeli military, and the fact that they have no reason to change (quite the opposite).
Got it , and are now all American companies suspect because they are managed behind the scenes by Musk and Trump?
if you're born there, you have little choice in the matter.
Given that unless you are in Israel you're most likely to be meeting Israeli expats or at the very least people who travel, that's hardly surprising and not great evidence for anything.
> In fact, the Snyk founder lives in London now
So you're acknowledging that you're going to hold their country of origin against them even after they've moved. Got it.
People can't help where they're born, and you're wrong to hold that against them. You're welcome to work through that cognitive dissonance however you like, but in the meantime I will continue to advocate for treating individuals as individuals.
You “denouncing” people who make a rational calculation isn’t really helping to market the firms you are supporting.
That said, this obviously isn't going anywhere, so have a nice day.