''Who is Rodney Joffe, aka ‘Tech Executive-1’ in Durham indictment?''
By Bruce Golding
September 30, 2021 9:48pm Updated
The tech executive referenced in the criminal case against leading cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was identified Thursday as an industry pioneer who’s founded the world’s first commercial internet hosting company, is an expert in detecting malware and holds 10 patents.
Rodney Joffe is the person referred to as “Tech Executive-1” in Sussman’s indictment for allegedly lying to the FBI by withholding his connections to Hillary Clinton’s losing 2016 election campaign against former President Donald Trump, according to CNN.
Joffe, who’s not accused of any wrongdoing, “retained Sussman as his lawyer” in February 2015 in connection with an unspecified “matter involving an agency of the US government,” according to the indictment.
Sussman’s indictment is part of special counsel John Durham’s probe of the FBI investigation into claims that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian officials.
Joffe’s LinkedIn profile says he retired earlier this month as senior vice president and security chief technology officer at Neustar Inc., a Reston, Va.-based company that provides various internet-related services and products to more than 8,000 commercial and government clients around the world.
Earlier, he founded the UltraDNS Corp., the first cloud-based company to develop and market the “domain name” services that translate numerical internet addresses into memorable names that can be typed into a browser, which was bought by Neustar in 2006 for nearly $62 million in cash.
Joffe also founded and was chief technology officer of Genuity, which was the first company to offer commercial hosting services that allow people and companies to create and maintain websites without running their own computer servers connected to the internet.