From: Nexus (nexuspatrol.i-way.co.uk)
Date: Sun Sep 28 2003 - 08:35:56 CDT

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> >From slashdot: "Yep. Geer is one who gets it. Stake is a for-profit
firm,

This is sad suituation IMHO, not least because I have a great deal of
respect for Dan and being exstake.com myself (as I'm sure a few on here are
as well ;-)

> sound. Stake clients are best served by a firm that is beholden to no SW
> publisher, and what this action suggests is that Stake is not such a
> firm."

This is quite ironic as former stake CEO Chris Darby used the "beholden to
none" soundbyte as often as he could. IIRC one of the founding objectives
for stake was to be independant of the big boys. Then again, he said a
lot of other things but this isn't the place ;-)

> And, just for giggles, from
http://www.atstake.com/company_info/ethics.html:
> "Issue public statements, advisories, and the like only in an objective,
> fact-based and truthful manner while in the course of our job
> responsibilities"

Except the advisories stopped for while... why ?
Because someone senior in the company mentioned a client in an article on
the Register.
And who was that someone ?

> ``Security is much more complicated than focusing on this one issue,''
> said Chris Wysopal, AtStake's director of research and development. ``We
> think the way the (CCIA) paper is positioned ... is just not the answer.''

*ahem* Someone that is still at the company despite that minor faux paux...

> Now, a lot can fit in an elipses like that, but I think Microsoft's PR
> department could have said the exact same thing, and probably did, in a
> private phone call.

Possibly, maybe even straight to the board or James Mobely ?
We can but conject as other than them, only Dan knows for certain, as you
said.
Knowing how stake have acted in the past, my guess is that this paper was
not officially sanctioned by stake hence the issue. Though I do wonder
how may of Dan's myriad other contributions to a wide variety of forums were
also so sanctioned ?
One thing that is not conjecture is the negative backlash that stake are
getting for this, as a cursory search of google groups proves - I have a lot
of repect for some of the people still at stake and they are probably
getting it worse than those of us that can comment from the sideline in
safety.

Cheers,
            JJ

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