Entropic Engineering DEFCON 32 Statement

DEFCON’s response was posted on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/s/NVw5T4LXQR

Unsurprisingly, it contradicts some of the claims Entropic has been making. Entropic admits to having exceeded agreed upon budgets by a significant amount, which DEFCON corroborates. There is some disagreement about what has been paid, though, as DEFCON believes they have paid for the hardware development.

Some of the other claims also appear to have been exaggerated or at least phrased in misleading ways. The Entropic Engineering logo was not removed from the PCBs. Their logo was not included on the plastics because Entropic was not responsible for the plastics and the initial plan to include their logo was only a courtesy before the relationship soured. The DEFCON statement alludes to budgets being exceeded by a significant margin (not covered by minor reductions in hourly rate as the other statement implied) and even calls out some “bad-faith” charges.

I’m also confused about the earlier threats to use the DMCA against DEFCON for using the firmware without a license. As far as I can tell, the firmware was produced as part of the agreement between DEFCON and Entropic, in which case there shouldn’t be much question about the license as it’s a work for hire. Imagine hiring a company to write software to your spec and then to have them later try to claim they’re going to pursue legal action for using the software you paid them to write. Something is strange here.

It also appears that the firmware engineer’s dismissal from the talk was communicated before it began, so his choice to get on stage anyway knowingly violated that decision. Regardless of what we think should have happened, getting up on stage after being told not to isn’t going to go well at any conference for any reason.

I think there’s a lot more to this story than the initial round of accusations let on. I think the first movers in publishing their narrative often win the public opinion debate, but if even half of what DEFCON is saying is true then Entropic and their team don’t appear to be operating entirely in good faith with the way they’ve handled this publicity.

I do a lot of hiring, and the moment I have to take race, gender or sexual preferences into account, is the moment I will give a big fuck you.

I will not discredit the competencies of anyone that I hired or will hire in the future.

It is when 90% of hiring decisions go in favour of the 'unprivileged' despite them making up a far smaller percentage of the total population.

They didn’t wait until the project was complete. They issued a stop work order due to being over budget and also some “bad faith” charges they noticed. DEFCON then sent their own team to handle the production run.

Credit was not erased from the PCB nor the software, which were the parts Entropic was contracted to do. They declined to include entropic on the plastics, which is understandable given that Entropic didn’t do the plastics. It also likely saved machining costs on the mold for a project that was already over budget.

The original accusations appear to be a little exaggerated.

DEFCON continues to demonstrate year after year just how poorly its run. There are bigger events out there (albeit not hacking cons) that cost less and go much more smoothly. Meanwhile, the price of DEFCON admission continues to increase every year while value diminishes.