U.S. Investigating Sale of Snort as Security Risk

msmoriarty writes "The Associated Press is reporting today that the same U.S. committee that approved the Dubai ports deal is 'strongly objecting' to Israeli-based Check Point's acquisition of Snort's parent company, Sourcefire, because it doesn't want a foreign company to own Snort's underlying technology. According to the article, the broader 45-day review process rejected for the ports deal is already underway regarding this transaction, and 'secret' meetings between the FBI, DoD and Check Point have been held."

Comments

I could be wrong...

[farrellj]

But isn't Snort Open Source? Doesn't that mean that the "technology" is already *out* there?

Could this just be another bogus attempt by the Bush's krewe to "spin" things, and make it look like they actually care about the US surviving another 200 years, as opposed to preparing for "The Rapture" that Fundamentalist Christians have been saying is 'comming soon', for the past 1,000 years?

Good thing there are term limits!

ttyl
          Farrell

Sale of 'Family Silver'

[chris_sawtell]

When both countries and people have run up debts that they cannot service they have to be prepared to sell off things to repay those debts. Warmongering is an expensive exercise, you have to pay for by selling assets. US, get used to the idea; it will happen more and more in the future.

Re:What is good for the goose

[Philip K Dickhead]

Use the SOURCE, Avi... I mean Luke.

It is long since time we all forked from Marty, anyway. The Nessus debacle looms, again.

Per Leonid Shebarshin, ex-chief of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service:
Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: "We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion."

Eh, big deal.

[irregular_hero]

First, I should point out that some of the other posters here seem to think Sourcefire == Snort. It does not, although Sourcefire's products have some dependency on Snort as a general engine. Sourcefire's main product line is actually far deeper than just SnortOnABox -- it delves into areas like vulnerability management and event collection/aggregation, things that "open source" Snort does only if you have a really good administrator who knows how to piece together all the various moving parts into something manageable.

Second, it's remarkable that the DoD would question Check Point's intentions. If they truly cared whether this particular deal was in the best interests of "national security" (whatever that happens to mean today, then they wouldn't use Check Point's firewall products either. But they do! The US Navy uses Check Point firewalls in great, prodigious quantities -- enough that they need Check Point's ISP-class management console software to run all of them! And they're not the only branch of the military using it, not to mention the multitude of other Federal agencies.

This sounds like a reach to me. Something based in rumor, started by a politician, that has to be ended by the press finding the real story inside the rumor...

Re:Israelis Aren't "just fine" In Tech Industries

[az99p11]

The thing that people dont realize how many federal and military branches use Check Point products throughout their networks. They also use Check Point Integrity as their desktop soloutions(Integrity came from the Zone Labs Acquisition). 100% of Fortune 100 companies use Check Point as well as 90% of the Fortune 500 companies. So I don't see what the issue is, since most of the government agencies and contractors use Check Point. Also, Sourcefire isnt just Snort, they have an enterprise version which adds onto the snort engine and sells to enterprises for a pretty penny.

I do not see what the issue is since the Snort engine is open source, and Check Point already has an in depth knowledge of the Sourcefire product. Either way its ridiculous to try to veto this acquisition.

Re:Well...

[grahamlee]

Currently, yes. But the argument is that if some evil superpower (which, I mean, even Canada is, these days, right?) were controlling things, then the two may diverge in interesting and nuclear-proliferation-causing ways.

Re:Israeli Security

[chill]

So you must be unaware that there are several departments in the government that are prohibited by policy from using Check Point products due to the parent company being foreign (Israeli)?

You sound also equally unaware that the Israeli's are routinely in the top 5 countries that use gov't-sourced espionage to illegally assist native (Israeli) businesses? (France and China are two others. I can't remember the rest off the top of my head.)

What is boils down to is Israel is more like the U.S. that almost anywhere else in when push comes to shove, they will put their best interests first and fuck everyone else and everone else's opinion.