Alex Stamos (born 1979) is an American,[1] cybersecurity expert, the former chief security officer (CSO) at Facebook. His planned departure from the company, following disagreement with other executives about how to address the Russian government's use of its platform to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, was reported in March 2018.[2]
Stamos began his career at Loudcloud and, later, as a security consultant at @stake.[4]
iSEC Partners
In 2004, Stamos co-founded iSEC Partners, a security consulting firm, with Joel Wallenstrom, Himanshu Dwivedi, Jesse Burns and Scott Stender. During his time at iSEC Partners, Stamos was well known for his research publications on vulnerabilities in forensics software[5] and MacOS,[6]Operation Aurora,[7] and security ethics in the post-Snowden era.[8]
Stamos was an expert witness for a number of cases involving digital privacy, encryption, and free speech:
iSEC Partners was acquired by NCC Group in 2010.[13]
Artemis Internet
Following the acquisition of iSEC Partners by NCC Group, Stamos became the CTO of Artemis Internet, an internal startup at NCC Group. Artemis Internet petitioned ICANN to host a '.secure' gTLD on which all services would be required to meet minimum security standards[14] Artemis ultimately acquired the right to operate the '.trust' gTLD from Deutsche Post to launch its services.[15]
Stamos filed and received five patents for his work at Artemis Internet.[16]
Yahoo!
In 2014, Stamos joined Yahoo! as CSO.[17] While at Yahoo!, he testified to Congress on online advertising and its impact on computer security and data privacy.[18] He publicly challenged NSA Director Michael S. Rogers on the subject of encryption backdoors in February 2015 at a cybersecurity conference hosted by New America.[19][20]
Facebook
In 2015, Stamos joined Facebook as CSO. During his time at Facebook, Stamos co-authored a whitepaper (with Jen Weedon and Will Nuland) on the use of social media to attack elections.[21] He later delivered a keynote address at the Black Hat Briefings in 2017 on the need to broaden the definition of security and diversify the cybersecurity industry.[22]
In reviewing the ads buys, we have found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May of 2017 — associated with roughly 3,000 ads — that was connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts and Pages in violation of our policies. Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia.
Following disagreement with other executives about how to address the Russian government's use of its platform to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he made plans in 2018 to leave the company[2] to take a research professorship at Stanford University.[24]
During Stamos's tenure as the Chief Security Officer, Facebook was involved in numerous safety and security controversies including the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, failure to remove reported child-abuse images,[27] inaction against disinformation campaigns in Philippines that targeted and harassed journalists, [28][29]Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal and the Rohingya genocide, for which the company has played a "determining role" according to the UN.[30] Stamos said, as the CSO during the 2016 election season he "deserve as much blame (or more) as any other exec at the company," for Facebook's failed response to the Russian interference.[31] Although the whitepaper Stamos coauthored[21] only mentioned $100,000 ad spend for 3,000 ads connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts, it was later revealed that the Russian influence had reached 126 million Facebook users.[32] While Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 87 million Facebook users before Stamos's tenure, Facebook did not notify its users until 2018, despite knowing about it as early as 2015, the year Stamos joined the company as the CSO.[33] In July 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $100 million to settle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors for more than two years (2015-2018) about the misuse of its users' data.[34]
At the beginning of 2021, Stamos joined former CISAdirectorChris Krebs to form Krebs Stamos Group, a cybersecurity consultancy, which quickly landed its first customer, the recently-beleaguered SolarWinds.[37][38][39]
↑ Sebenius, Alyza (2021-01-08). "SolarWinds Taps Krebs, Stamos to Help Investigate Hack". Bloomberg. Retrieved 19 June 2021. SolarWinds Corp. has tapped prominent security experts Chris Krebs and Alex Stamos to review its practices after suspected Russian hackers compromised the company's software and conducted a sprawling hack across the U.S. government and private sector. The contract with SolarWinds is the first for a newly formed venture Krebs and Stamos have created together. The Krebs Stamos Group will advise clients on cybersecurity, with a focus on areas including foreign threats and crisis situations. The group will work toward 'national and economic security,' Krebs said in a statement Friday.
↑ Hamilton, Isobel Asher (2021-01-08). "SolarWinds has hired ex-CISA chief Chris Krebs and Facebook's former security lead Alex Stamos months after its huge hack". Business Insider. Retrieved 19 June 2021. SolarWinds has hired two of the biggest names in cybersecurity, following the gigantic breach, which meant it acted as the gateway for hackers to penetrate US government systems. SolarWinds announced on Thursday it was retaining a new security consulting business founded by Chris Krebs, a former Homeland Security cybersecurity official, and ex-Facebook security chief and Stanford University professor Alex Stamos.
↑ Whittaker, Zach (2021-01-08). "Chris Krebs and Alex Stamos have started a cyber consulting firm". TechCrunch. Retrieved 19 June 2021. Former U.S. cybersecurity official Chris Krebs and former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos have founded a new cybersecurity consultancy firm, which already has its first client: SolarWinds. The two have been hired as consultants to help the Texas-based software maker recover from a devastating breach by suspected Russian hackers. Krebs was one of the most senior cybersecurity officials in the U.S. government, most recently serving as the director of Homeland Security's CISA cybersecurity advisory agency from 2018, until he was fired by President Trump for his efforts to debunk false election claims — many of which came from the president himself. Stamos, meanwhile, joined the Stanford Internet Observatory after holding senior cybersecurity positions at Facebook and Yahoo. He also consulted for Zoom amid a spate of security problems.
Patents
U.S. patent 9083727B1Securing client connections, filed April 11, 2012, granted July 14, 2015
U.S. patent 8799482B1Domain policy specification and enforcement, filed April 11, 2012, granted August 5, 2014
U.S. patent 9106661B1Computing resource policy regime specification and verification, filed May 9, 2014, granted August 11, 2014
U.S. patent 8990392B1Assessing a computing resource for compliance with a computing resource policy regime specification, filed May 9, 2014, granted March 24, 2015
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