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**Justin Garrison:** It was a good one. We'll mark this one as a recommended for sure in the feed. For the outro here, because -- let's see... A lot of things have happened, and we've got a couple of links this week. It's just how we used to do intros, we're just doing a couple of links now and talking about it a bit. ... |
**Autumn Nash:** Okay. So I don't know if anyone saw it, but I feel like it's been pretty in the news lately... Google was going to acquire Wiz. And Wiz is -- I don't know, how would you describe Wiz? Maybe an observability software? |
**Justin Garrison:** Or cyber security... Yeah. Security-focused... |
**Autumn Nash:** Yeah. I am a fan. I think that their marketing's really good. I think their product can be used in a lot of really cool multi-cloud observability security kind of settings. I've spoke with some of their product managers and engineers at conferences... So Google was going to acquire them for - what, lik... |
**Justin Garrison:** 23 billion. |
**Autumn Nash:** So people were kind of freaking out, because this is like one of the first really, really big acquisitions since tech has kind of been in this tech recession... Like, there's no more \[unintelligible 00:55:16.17\] |
**Justin Garrison:** And it would have been Google's largest acquisition. |
**Autumn Nash:** Yeah. So what is this, like 23 Motorolas, or something like that? When Motorola was acquired. |
**Justin Garrison:** Was Motorola a billion? I know Instagram was a billion. I don't remember what Motorola was. |
**Autumn Nash:** So that's like 23 Instagrams. And this is after -- like, we are no longer in zero... |
**Justin Garrison:** Zero interest rate, ZIRP? |
**Autumn Nash:** Yeah. So think about -- like, you are paying crazy interest. This is a lot of money for an acquisition. So people were shocked that Google was ready to pay this much money for a startup. And then they said, "Hey, never mind. We're going to IPO. We don't want your money." And turned it down. |
\[55:59\] So it was wild, because the talk of this acquisition was so big. People were just like "They're going to do what? For how much money?" And for them to turn it down... I mean, in this era of people being really unsure about the future of tech and like products, a lot of people would have took that money and go... |
**Justin Garrison:** Yeah, that's a lot of money. And looking back -- I didn't realize Motorola was 2011... And they were $12.5 billion. And that was supposed to be an all cash deal for the shares, because Motorola was a public company... |
**Autumn Nash:** So that's two Motorolas and 23 Instagrams? |
**Justin Garrison:** Yeah. And Google at the time, according to this article, Google had $39 billion in cash. So they were spending 12 billion out of their 39 to buy this company, that they later got rid of. Like, they deprecated that purchase... |
**Autumn Nash:** That's why it was super-interesting, because we were just talking about the things that Google has shut down on another episode... So then it was like really funny, because when the word of this acquisition came out, everyone was like "Are they going to buy Wiz and deprecate it?" So it was interesting. |
Also, it was just like "What is your motivation for buying Wiz?" I mean, I think it's a good company, but $23 billion in the times of not knowing -- you know, we're talking about how we can't hire enough engineers in most companies, and how we're cutting all these projects because of money... And they were down to spen... |
**Justin Garrison:** There had to have been something there. And also the fact that this is not an AI company. This is a security company. They might have a future of "We're integrating AI into everything." I'm sure that's what Google may have saw in it... But who knows? Like, there was something that was worth $23 bil... |
The other thing that was interesting was Wiz raised a billion dollars recently, with a 12 billion valuation. So this was going to like double their valuation. But also, a billion-dollar raise is a billion dollars in raising money. And at this point, if you're exiting at $23 billion, you're only getting a 23-exit on tha... |
**Autumn Nash:** I feel like you're still knowing that you're getting your money multiplied in a very uncertain time... |
**Justin Garrison:** Yeah. |
**Autumn Nash:** To walk away from -- I mean, it is just very impressive to raise a billion dollars right now. Anything that's not AI is not getting a ton of money. Chainguard just -- how much money did Chainguard just raise? |
**Justin Garrison:** Yeah, Changeguard just raised, too. Yeah. Series C for them. |
**Autumn Nash:** Yeah. Series C, they raised... |
**Justin Garrison:** It was hundreds of millions, but I don't remember... |
**Autumn Nash:** $140 million, which is impressive in this time, with a $1.1 billion evaluation... Which - is this a shift that we're starting to go back and invest money into things that aren't just AI maybe? |
**Justin Garrison:** In both cases, security-related companies. This is -- |
**Autumn Nash:** Yeah. So maybe that means we're finally spending more money in security, and putting money into important things, and not just in the AI hype... I don't know. But what do you have to think your product is worth that you're like "Nah, I don't want $23 billion of cash"? |
**Justin Garrison:** Any company, if Google offers to buy you publicly, and then your -- your evaluation in general is just going to go up. Because then at that point, everyone notices. Oh, Google saw something in you. I will pay you more... At some point. |
**Autumn Nash:** But these are all fake dollars though. |
**Justin Garrison:** Exactly. |
**Autumn Nash:** Evaluation's cool, but that's not the money in your bank account. You had the chance to put that money in your bank account. I mean, they weren't getting all $23 billion, but that's still -- it's not exactly a little amount of money. |
**Justin Garrison:** \[01:00:13.20\] Yeah. So I don't know. Interesting decision for them. |
**Autumn Nash:** Tech is wild right now. |
**Justin Garrison:** Maybe they see something in either the stock market continuing to grow, or startups in general growing in the future... We'll see. My link of the week is a Wired story, which - sorry, it's paywalled. But for anyone listening to this podcast, you probably know things, archive.org, and whatnot... But... |
I actually have a semantic two-factor here that was an RSA key back in the day... And I had it for finance investments, or whatever. Some account, they wouldn't let me have a strong password, so I'm like "Send me a two-factor." And I've had it forever, but RSA got hacked back in 2011, and they stole the seeds for those... |
**Autumn Nash:** So did they find out how it got stolen? |
**Justin Garrison:** Yeah, so the story -- there was always speculation and stuff, and this was a really cool Wired article about... Yeah, it was basically an Excel spreadsheet that gave them a backdoor. |
**Autumn Nash:** Wait, an Excel spreadsheet? |
**Justin Garrison:** It was not a zero-day, but just some malware attached to it. It exploited Flash. This was 2011, Flash was a big deal... So an Excel file/spreadsheet exploited Flash. And the fascinating thing was they said that this was done in a -- it's not a sophisticated hack, to email someone something, and the... |
**Autumn Nash:** I wonder how they even knew that the other group got their foot in the door and then they exploited it. It's like the Trojan horse, but wrapped up in an Excel file, but two Trojan horses in one Excel file... That is wild. |
**Tim Banks:** The RSA hack was huge for security, because governments everywhere were using it. And this actually led to more companies -- like, government contractors got hacked through this two-factor hack. So they stole the seeds of all the two-factor things, and then they used those to go hack into other companies... |
And they had a server in a room that would burn CDs, and they would send the CD to a customer. And that customer had to seed their server with those seeds. And so the initial seeds were still stored on the RSA servers, and that's the only place they existed, where you can get them. And they went in, they grabbed - I fo... |
**Autumn Nash:** This is wild. |
**Justin Garrison:** Yeah. And so this had been a mystery for over 10 years as like "Oh, this thing happened." I remember it happening. |
And now all the NDAs for the executives have expired, so they were able to talk about it. And so I really enjoyed it, just because I remembered when it hit the news the first time... And I remember seeing, there was like "Oh, was that us? Was it actually from the RSA hack or not?" And sure enough - yeah, there was defi... |
**Autumn Nash:** That is -- like, wow. It's supposed to make it more secure. "Just kidding. We gave it to everybody." |
**Justin Garrison:** I mean, they were thinking "Oh, we did our best." It was on a single server that was supposedly air-gapped, but there was like one way to get into it, because they had to keep seeding those seed files and burning CDs. |
**Autumn Nash:** But how wild is it that an Excel file took them down? Like, an Excel file. |
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