SAN FRANCISCO — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a formal complaint with the city of San Francisco on Tuesday after receiving an anonymous tip that "hundreds of animals were being confined to booths and forced to perform for crowds" at the RSA Conference at Moscone Center.

PETA dispatched a three-person response team to the expo floor within the hour. The complaint named what PETA assumed were real animals: CrowdStrike Falcon, Datadog, Orca Security, Black Duck, Thinkst Canary, and JFrog as respondents.

The tip, which PETA described as "highly detailed and technically credible," was later traced to a group of security leaders who submitted it from a vendor party on the first night of the conference after being turned away at the door for not expressing interest in the vendor's product. One of the individuals involved, a CISO at a mid-market SaaS company, told the Exploit the prank "started as a joke," but escalated after someone in the group pointed out how many vendors used animals in their name or branding. "We figured PETA wouldn't know what a SIEM was," he said. "We were right."

PETA's response team spent two days on the expo floor investigating. They requested veterinary records from Datadog. They asked JFrog for documentation on the "frog's living conditions." They asked Orca Security about the company's "marine mammal transport permits." At no point did any member of the response team appear to understand that the animals in question were just part of the brand of the security companies.

The situation was briefly complicated when PETA's team encountered an actual falcon wandering the expo floor in a small branded vest. The bird, which Torq had named Robert Girdle and brought as part of a marketing stunt, had gone missing earlier that morning.