Dasient Has Been Acquired by Twitter

The Dasient team is excited to announce that we have been acquired by Twitter! Effective immediately, we will be bringing our technology, tools, and team to the revenue engineering team at Twitter.

Since its inception, Dasient has been focused on solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of online abuse. In 2009, Dasient launched its web anti-malware platform, capable of scanning URLs and websites for the presence of harmful content. In 2010, Dasient launched the industry’s first anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from the scourge of malicious ads. Over the last year, we have been very active in securing the ads and content of the some of the industry’s largest ad networks and web sites.

By joining Twitter, Dasient will be able to apply its technology and team to the world’s largest real-time information network. As part of this merger, Dasient is winding down its business and is no longer able to accept new customers.

We would like to thank our customers, partners, investors, and advisers for all of their support over the years, including Google Ventures, Radar Partners, Floodgate, and Benhamou Global Ventures.

Follow us on Twitter: Paul Stich, CEO (@PJStich); Neil Daswani, Co-Founder and CTO (@neildaswani); Ameet Ranadive, Co-Founder and VP Products (@ameet); Shariq Rizvi, Co-Founder and VP Engineering (@shariqrizvi)

Hashing IMEI numbers does not protect privacy

In an effort to protect the privacy of users, mobile apps sometimes hash the user’s IMEI number prior to sending it to a server. We found that hashing IMEIs does not protect the privacy of users, even with the use of cryptographically secure hash functions. This result is due to the fundamental structure of IMEI numbers.

IMEI numbers and privacy concerns

BlackHat Talk Preview: "Mobile Malware Madness and How to Cap the Mad Hatters"

Last week, we had given previews of some of our findings from an analysis of 10,000 Android apps to a few reporters including Tim Wilson at DarkReading, Rob Westervelt at SearchSecurity, and Sean Kerner at InternetNews.com. Since then, we've been glad to see a high level of interest in our findings from other reporters as well! We'll be releasing our full set of findings at the BlackHat security conference on August 4 in Las Vegas, but until then, following is a preview of some of the findings that we thought would be of interest to the community:

Debunking The Myths Of Mac And Mobile Malware

Writing malware, as with writing any other type of software, involves costs and benefits.  Like any software developer, malware authors want to reach as many users as they can, usually by creating a program that is easy and fast to deploy and can be written with minimum effort.  But with malware, these costs and benefits aren’t as obvious as many observers think.

The Dasient Q4 Malware Update: Significant Rise in Malvertising Attacks, Social Networking Sites Easy Distribution Platforms for Malware

Q4 2010 was a quarter in which we saw continued growth of web malware and malvertising attacks targeting legitimate sites. In this report, we focus on (1) quantitative measurements around web malware and malvertising, (2) analysis surrounding the most significant attacker domains for the quarter, and (3) results from some experiments we conducted on the potential impact that web malware could have on social media networks.

New financial malware hijacks online banking session after user logs out

There are many reports today about a new, sophisticated type of financial malware called “OddJob” that will hijack a user’s session after they have logged out of their online banking account to commit fraud. According to reports from Trusteer, there are a few things that are noteworthy about the attack:

New Funding, New Website, New Research

It's been an exciting week for us. We raised new funding by Google Ventures, launched a new website and Neil and team have published new research on the widgetization of the web.

Malware is one of the fastest growing threats on the Internet today. We are thrilled that the additional funding by Google Ventures will help support our mission and commitment to keep the Internet safe and malware-free for users and online businesses. For more details on the this partnership read the press release here.