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.

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.

It was very widely reported across the globe.

Just like companies founded by say former operatives of the CIA, NSA, MI6, etc. would (and maybe should?) be viewed with skepticism, so too are companies founded by former members of Unit 8200.

Mentioning that Israel's military (like many others) has engaged in some less than ethical behavior is not equivalent to antisemitism. Trying to pretend otherwise is ridiculous.

That may not be strictly antisemitic—maybe you're totally fine with Jews as long as they were raised anywhere else—but it's still not a healthy way to treat people.

What exactly am I confusing by pointing that out?

Were you under the impression that this unit was something like the NSA, staffed with people who chose to spy on people as a career? Because it's not. It's staffed by kids who are very good with computers and who—when given a choice between covert intelligence and a branch that actively shoots guns at people—chose the intelligence arm. Which would you have chosen?

Just months ago, some of those "kids who are very good with computers" caused compromised pagers to explode, with no knowledge of who would be near them. Civilians, including children, died as a result. It is right to think people who are "good with computers" in this way might not have the best intentions in their other applications of computers.

Any Israeli citizen in that age bracket today is going to be running a real risk of killing people. They don't have a choice (dodging the draft doesn't count as a choice). If you're going to hold that over for them for the rest of their lives I don't know how that's distinct from racism (or countryism if you prefer).

Yes. The "just following orders" excuse has been tried in the past. People didn't buy it then and we won't buy it now.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-soldiers-arrest-ab...

If the IDF wants to name the specific individuals from Unit 8200 who were involved in maiming or killing civilians including children by blowing up electronics in their faces, that might change things. Then it'd be a lot easier for people to avoid having concerns about that entire unit. Not naming them seems a lot like tacit support by the IDF for the actions of those in Unit 8200 who killed those children. Otherwise, people very well may have concerns about that entire unit. That's not "racism."

So it's okay to blame vets of Unit 8200 for its actions 10 years after they founded Snyk (I have no idea how long after they left the unit) on the grounds that the intelligence arm of the IDF doesn't name names? So just in case and in the face of all the facts of the timelines, we should make sure to drag out these people's former mandatory service and remind everyone they served alongside bad guys 10+ years ago?

I'm not okay with blaming soldiers for following orders. When it's that or getting shot by your own side, there isn't a real choice. But I can't even begin to understand the mindset that would blame soldiers for the orders that other, unrelated soldiers followed more than 10 years later. That's some next-level hatred.

FSB agents worked there for decades and chose that instead of any number of other things they could have done. Unit 8200 conscripts worked there for at most 2 years 8 months and chose it instead of a different, more gun-blazing branch of the military.

Mandatory military service completely changes the profile of the vets in a way that makes all these comparisons totally irrational. They're founded in fear and hatred for Israelis, not any reasonable similarity.

Also, okay then let's switch it up to the Russian army. Would you use a product with known ties to some electronic warfare russian army unit. Or rather, would you consider any doubts or hesitations over using said product to be "russophobic"?

I'm not defending the state, I'm defending the individuals who were conscripted.

The entire point of this subthread is that it's heinous to confuse the two.

> Would you use a product with known ties to some electronic warfare russian army unit. Or rather, would you consider any doubts or hesitations over using said product to be "russophobic"?

If I suddenly learned that some founding members of the JetBrains team had previously been conscripted into the Russian army and had served in a cyberwarfare unit, that would change absolutely nothing for me. And yes, I do consider the backlash against JetBrains in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine to have been highly rusophobic.

In the sense that this is just a direct result of Israel's actions. They staged an incredibly powerful intelligence coup with the blown up pagers. Now I agree that if you aren't involved in middle Eastern politics, there's no reason to be scared of Israeli products (even if made by ex-israeli soldiers). But I completely understand where the reputational damage comes from, it was such a well executed operation that it does cast more doubts on anything related to Israel.

My point about conscription was that it is worse in the sense that most Israeli citizens can be de-facto coerced into becoming an agent of the state, making Israeli products inherently more suspicious (and more tied to state policy, regardless of the individuals involved). As you say, most Israelis don't necessarily chose to be in the army. A lot of Hamas fighters are also basically conscripts, but that nuance wouldn't matter for most either.

There's also just the purely ideological angle, which is also what happened to anything touching Russia back in 2022. That's the angle that I agree is mostly unjustifiable.

If you truly believe that you'd risk your government's wrath instead of just picking the least dangerous and least likely to kill people branch of your military, then feel free to throw stones. For myself, my plan if the draft were reinstated in the US while I was still of that age was to find out how to join a cyberwarfare division, which would have led me straight to Unit 8200 if I were Israeli.

I know it’s not this simple in matters of war, but if someone believes their government is systematically committing moral atrocities, it seems reasonable to consider civil disobedience as an option even if the consequences are severe.

You’re right that we in the US are lucky not to be faced with a choice like this (for now), but I still think it’s a choice.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1218643254/israel-is-using-an...

The only way to hold this against the individuals rationally, especially for those on this forum who would absolutely have chosen Unit 8200 as the least bad option given conscription, is to blame every citizen of the state of Israel and hold them all in distrust for having ever been in any branch of the IDF. I'm personally not okay with that level of sweeping blame and distrust. Are you?

nobody has said or even implied this

> hold them all in distrust for having ever been in any branch of the IDF

nobody has said or even implied this

> that level of sweeping blame and distrust

There has not been any such thing in this discussion.

We're done here.

> 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.

Given that Unit 8200 is staffed by conscripts, how is this anything other than attempting to ensure that any person who ever came of age in Israel has that held against them for the rest of their careers?

Members of Unit 8200 weren't given a choice between that and the private sector—they were given a choice between that and shooting a gun, which for a technically inclined new-adult isn't much of a choice at all. And am I seriously supposed to believe that OP would argue that choosing to be a grunt who shoots a gun at people would be the morally purer choice that would make someone more trustworthy?

The reason why OP's comment feels like a racist dog whistle is because it's an enormous and dangerous generalization that seems to encompass an entire country. Israel has mandatory military service—if everyone who's ever served in the IDF is untrustworthy because they served in the IDF then you're by definition excluding nearly every Israeli citizen from trust. I guess that's not strictly antisemitism—maybe you're happy to trust Jews that don't live in Israel—but it's definitely an unsavory position to take.

"Encompassing the entire country" would be anti-zionist, not antisemitic.

There is a huge difference, and that does not change because the majority of people in that country are a particular religion, just like it's not "Anti-Protestant" if someone attacks Great Britain policies, or "Anti-Hindu" if someone criticizes India.

There is a difference, to the extent that there are plenty of jews who are anti-zionist.

Would you like to accuse them of being antisemitic because "nearly every Israeli citizen is Jewish"?

Also, it's your construct that criticizing the policies and actions of a country's military and government is "anti" that county...

No, it's not—we're in a subthread where the OP said "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."

They took the country's current policy and made it personal against specific IDF vets. That's what I'm standing against.

For the rest, I specifically said that it may not be antisemitic given that it's country-specific, so I'm not sure what you were getting at. I'm still not okay with blanket blaming an entire country's citizenry for its government actions. I wasn't okay with that when it came to Russia and Ukraine, I don't know why I should treat this differently now.

I'm a techie, if I were forced into conscription I would absolutely choose an option that let me use computers over one that forced me to shoot a gun. There's no way on Earth I can hold it against a bunch of kids who were forced to make that choice that they chose the intelligence arm.

And frankly, I have a hard time seeing how someone on this forum could hold that against them in good faith. Nearly everyone here would make the same call given that choice. If you think you wouldn't have, you're probably deluding yourself.

Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, Intel is full of ex-8200.

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.