Fergie's Tech Blog

Microsoft Buys Rootkit Detection Startup

Ryan Naraine writes on eWeek:

Looking to beef up the anti-malware protection capabilities in its enterprise and consumer security products, Microsoft has inked a deal to acquire Komoku Inc., a U.S. government-funded startup that specializes in finding malicious rootkits.

Financial terms of the deal were not released.

Komoku, of College Park, Md., took in about $2.5 million in funding from DARPA, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Navy to built out a suite of hardware and software-based anti-rootkit products.

The hardware-based product, called CoPilot, is a high-assurance PCI card capable of monitoring the hosts memory and file system at the hardware level. It is specifically geared toward high-security servers and computers. On the software side, Komoku's Gamma is aimed at businesses looking for a low-assurance utility to pinpoint operating system abnormalities that may be linked to malicious rootkit activity.

posted by Fergie @ 3/20/2008 12:00:00 PM