Guess You Thought I Was Someone To Mess With

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://georgiaweidman.com/wordpress/guess-you-thought-i-was-someone-to-mess-with/

[Well worth the read, otherwise I wouldn't have posted it.   - WK]


Georgia Weidman's Security Blog
By georgia
June 18th, 2013
Posted in Uncategorized

Note: There will be no names named here. The perpetrator is not named. Likewise 
the heroes of the story who probably saved me from going to jail and at the 
very least comforted me when it felt like the floor was going to fall through 
are left unnamed. That said if you want to know the names I am willing to 
discuss it privately.

Note: By popular demand I have named him as Fernando Gont. He’s already 
threatened to sue me so I guess I have nothing to lose by posting it here, and 
everything to gain if it helps someone else. I was advised that naming him 
publicly would constitute libel.

I don’t want to write this. I don’t want to get caught up in anything to do 
with this women in infosec bit. Everyone who does get lambasted so badly at 
this point I’d rather avoid it entirely. You can’t say anything about sexism 
without getting lumped in with the creeper cards or the talk canceling at 
Bsides SF. Anyways I have a hard time making any sound judgment on sexism in 
infosec since infosec is the only life I know. It’s a fair statement that 
infosec and my career in infosec make up my entire life, so I don’t really have 
anything to compare it to. My first job out of college was in infosec, and to 
this day I have never been to a nightclub unless it was at an infosec event or 
at the very least with people I know from infosec. In addition to that I only 
have my own experiences. When I feel mistreated it’s easy to say that I was 
passed over for this or excluded from that because I’m female. On the other 
hand perhaps its because I’m of Germanic descent, or because I’m a fraud, or 
because I have poor social skills, or any myriad other list of good, bad, true, 
or made up reasons. I cannot compare my successes and setbacks objectively to 
anyone else’s any better than I can nail down the cause. For all these reasons 
I don’t think I can really answer the women in infosec question. This post 
isn’t about that. This is something different.

I was physically and (attempted) sexually assaulted at the Confidence 
conference in Poland 2 weeks ago. I haven’t really said anything public about 
it until now, mainly because I’m busy. After Poland I flew straight to another 
event back in the US, and the following week I went to Israel to teach a class. 
Anyone who reads my Twitter has read that I’m bogged down in book edits. I’m 
teaching a lot of new classes this summer and fall. Needless to say, I don’t 
have time to process this much less write about it. Plus I’ve gotten enough 
pushback already. People I thought were my friends and colleagues have said 
things to me about this that have cut deeper than the actual assault ever 
could. I don’t want to deal with more of that. I don’t want to see the comments 
for this post. But I feel like I have to do this. I weighed my options. If I 
shut up and do nothing and later hear he did this to someone else, I will feel 
personally responsible. I have to do everything I can to make sure another 
speaker or attendee doesn’t get worse than I got.

[...]

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