GoKawiilThere comes a point in many storied careers where a single event sits as a professional fulcrum. For Jen Ellis, that moment happened more than a decade ago.
The spark didn't come from something that happened to her. Instead, it was what she saw her good friend, HD Moore, go through for doing top-notch security research. She was collaborating with the Metasploit creator, running communications for security firm Rapid7 and the firm's growing body of security research. HD Moore and his team conducted the technical exploration, and she engaged with the broader community and told the world why that research mattered.
Everything was humming along until legal threats from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) derailed his progress. In 2013, Moore was put through a legal crucible and threatened with potential prosecution for the legitimate security research he was doing through Critical.io, an Internetwide scanning initiative that would eventually become Rapid7's Project Sonar.
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Moore was eventually cleared, but the damage was done. After three months of strain, he questioned whether he wanted to continue doing security research at all. Ellis was incensed.
"I got really, really mad about it. Not at HD — I totally understood his point of view. But I was mad that we had ticked every box to say this was legitimate, good-faith research," she says.
She dug into the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), state laws, and more. She didn't like what she saw. The legal and judicial frameworks were acting in opposition to good guys like Moore. Prosecutions were flying, and so were lawsuits from companies that the researchers were trying to help with disclosures.
"I found out that researchers all over the place were getting threatened by companies, and I was really indignant about it," she says. "I decided that something needed to be done."
From PR Maven to Policy Dynamo
It was those big feelings and sense of purpose that spurred her to walk into the office of Rapid7's then-CEO, Corey Thomas, with what seemed like a pretty audacious request.
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