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What Happened To Norse Corp.? Threat Intelligence Vendor Disappears (csoonline.com)

Posted by timothy on from the black-sails-in-the-sunset dept.

itwbennett writes: Over the weekend, Brian Krebs reported that Sam Glines, CEO of threat intelligence vendor Norse Corp., was asked to step down by the board of directors and employees were told that they could report to work on Monday, but that there was no guarantee they'd be paid for their work. 'Less than a day after Krebs published his article, Norse Corp.'s website was offline, and attempts to email the company failed,' writes CSO's Steve Ragan. 'The ever-popular Norse attack map was online for some of the weekend, but that too had gone dark by Sunday evening.' In the aftermath of the company's disappearance, the topic of flawed data and assumptions once again resurfaced in a blog post written by ICS expert, Robert M. Lee.

14 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Before we freak out by saboosh · · Score: 5, Informative

    "A careful review of previous ventures launched by the company’s founders reveals a pattern of failed businesses, reverse mergers, shell companies and product promises that missed the mark by miles." http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...

  2. Company that nobody has every heard of goes under by CajunArson · · Score: 4, Funny

    To quote the sage words of Peter Griffin: "Oh. My. God. Who. the Hell. Cares."

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
  3. Response by a Norse Programmer and Brian Krebs by Kobun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is an interesting exchange in the comments to Brian's article, between him and a former employee of Norse: http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...

    The ex-employee has written a blog post here (might be a liiiiiitle one-sided): http://pandawhale.com/post/703...

    1. Re:Response by a Norse Programmer and Brian Krebs by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes, but I find his comments rather... full of hubris....

      I quote from his post:

      "But I stand behind everything we built and everything we accomplished. No one has the data collection capability that we built. No one has the correlative, actuarial, data analysis capability that we built. And no one is able to do so, not just in real-time, but live, not even the 3 letter agencies."

      First, how can he possibly know what the 3 letter agencies can and cannot do?

      Second, if they couldn't before, I'd be shocked if they can't now, after taking Norse's code.

    2. Re:Response by a Norse Programmer and Brian Krebs by OverlordQ · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > "But I stand behind everything we built and everything we accomplished. No one has the data collection capability that we built. No one has the correlative, actuarial, data analysis capability that we built. And no one is able to do so, not just in real-time, but live, not even the 3 letter agencies."

      Hah, that's a load of bullshit. If any of that was true, you'd be selling to somebody, not shuttering the business.

      --
      Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    3. Re:Response by a Norse Programmer and Brian Krebs by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      I wouldn't bother with anyone who brags "not just in real-time, but live"

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  4. Re:Company that nobody has every heard of goes und by bigdady92 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You've never seen the graphs, the charts,the data that comes from this site. It's astounding to watch, I used to have a TV showing all the traffic coming from various countries and it was like watching Thermonuclear Warfare in action.

    You've probably never heard of that game from a movie you've never watched either. We get it.

    --
    Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
  5. LOL ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A careful review of previous ventures launched by the company's founders reveals a pattern of failed businesses, reverse mergers, shell companies and product promises that missed the mark by miles.

    So, we can't say this was likely vaporware put up by rip off artists with a long history of failed companies making dubious claims ... but it would appear this is the case.

    TFA pretty much reads like these guys are likely shady players with a long history of this:

    "These shell companies formed by [the company's founders] bilked investors," Landesman said. "Had anyone gone and investigated any of these partnerships they were espousing as being the next big thing, they would have realized this was all smoke and mirrors."

    Someone sounds like they're fairly unambiguously calling these guys con artists.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  6. Re:Company that nobody has every heard of goes und by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you're going to reference it, get it right! :)

    Global Thermonuclear War :)

    How about a nice game of Chess?

  7. A new owner? by sgtsquid · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe they are being bought out by BIZX, LLC and they are just trying to stir up some buzz before relaunching it as an ad page.

  8. Re:Company that nobody has every heard of goes und by bigdady92 · · Score: 2

    No Joshua, no more games for you.

    --
    Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
  9. nice looking graphs != useful graphs by aepervius · · Score: 3, Informative

    They were glorified scan graphs some other company presented before which I can't recall the name. They used to have a software to which you could feed your firewalls logs and get a similar graphs (reverse lookup on country always showed my home IP as being from half a world away but i digress). The problem is that scanning does not mean threat or attacks, and those graphs means next to nothing beyond marketing. Sure nice looking. But empty of meaning.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
    1. Re:nice looking graphs != useful graphs by Forgefather · · Score: 2

      This sentiment is reflected among the security professionals that I know. They believe that most cyber threat intelligence is bunk, and often ridicule it their spare time. But then again this is opsec. They ridicule everything.

      --
      "There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
  10. Note to the new Slashdot owners by b1ng0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No more itwbennet! All his posts link to csoonline.com or cio.com. Obviously a paid schill. And his posts are not worth the bits they are printed with. Kick him to the curb!