Cybersecurity Firm Advises Caution in Dealing With NSA

For two months RSA Executive Chairman Art Coviello has faced criticism that his company helped the National Security Agency spy on customers of the computer security firm.

He suggested that the government wasn't upfront about what it would do with his products and said other companies should be wary of working with US intelligence. If the NSA "exploits a tradition of trust within the security community, that's a problem," Coviello said. "If that is an issue, we can't work with the NSA," he said in a subsequent interview. Security researchers have questioned why RSA continued to use the Bsafe formula even after mathematicians discovered holes more than seven years ago. "There is maybe a little 20/20 hindsight here," Coviello said. Relatively few researchers found problems with the formula before the Snowden leaks, he said.