Google acquires security vendor Zynamics

Google adds reverse-engineering and analysis to its security efforts with the acquisition of Zynamics.

Thomas Dullien, a popular researcher more commonly known by his handle, Halvar Flake, announced the news on the Zynamics blog.

My long-time friend and former colleague Dennis Fisher put Google’s latest move into perspective on Threat Post: “The acquisition by Google is an interesting one, as the company continues to build out its internal security team and its malware identification and classification capabilities. Google has assembled a deep team of researchers in the last few years, including Chris Evans, Neel Mehta, Michal Zalewski and Tavis Ormandy, and has been focusing on identifying sites that are serving malware or malicious ads and steering users away from them.”

Dullien founded Zynamics in 2004 to focus on ways to automate reverse engineering and code analysis. He has been a sought-after speaker who has presented at CanSecWest, Black Hat and RSA.

Regarding its focus, Zynamics says on its website: “We provide solutions that aim at helping the software analyst to understand the complex relations that exist in modern software and to boost his productivity. We understand that the key to many problems in software analysis is proper visualization, and aim to build tools that make software analysis intuitive and easy (or at least easier).”

–Bill Brenner