Episode 1: Interview with Rich Salz, OpenSSL Core Team Member

June 16, 2017

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Pramod HS

Rich Salz is currently working at Akamai Technologies, OpenSSL core team member. He has been involved in the definition and implementation of standards for more than 20 years, starting with being a named contributor of HTTP. At Akamai he is involved with OpenSSL and general “security at scale” and configuration issues. He is heavily involved in the IETF TLS working group, Co-Chair of the ACME (LetsEncryp) protocol group, and has been in several RFC security reviews. He is a pioneer in the field of distributed systems and security.

Click on the link to download the full transcript – Download

Below are the questions asked during the interview –

  1. You studied at MIT, computer science what were you focused on?
  2. You were also a editor-in-chief for the tech MIT’S oldest newspaper, I saw your name.
  3. You worked with USENET, distributed discussion systems for a long time, can share your experience there?
    1. Were people really starting to realize the benefits of sharing information digitally and also they wanted to discuss globally?
  4. You joined OSF, what was your motivation? Just for the listeners, it’s an organization founded to set up standards for implementation of UNIX.
    1. It was more like a setting up standards right for the distributed computing in those days?
  5. You have contributed to HTTP. So today internet is built on top of it, RFC 1945, published in may 1996. So what’s your contribution? that’s very interesting to know there?
  6. You did a lot of work on distributed systems, when did your focused shifted to security?
  7. Today you are openSSL core team member, it’s the most widely deployed TLS library. When and how did you getting involved with this openSSL?
    1. How does the development takes place so who raises the issues and what are some of the challenges?
  8. You’re part of a many security reviews, I wanted to know what’s the process is like. Could you shed some light on who proposes and how are they reviewed?
    1. You generally give feedback they fix it and then send it back to you again for review. That’s like a process.
  9. You have been involved in the definition and implementation of internet security standards for more than twenty years now. What is your contribution that you are really proud of or want to share with us?

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