Mountain View, California — In an attempt to secure both its users and some of the company’s various products, the search engine behemoth Google has just acquired a small German security firm called Zynamics for its software analysis tools.
The Zynamics portal is pretty much blank, but with the shallow information that is available from various sources is: The company was established in 2004 by CEO Thomas Dullien, (popularly known in the hacking community as “Halvar Flake” in some circles), who has also been a speaker at various security conferences including Black Hat, CanSecWest, DEF CON, and RSA for years, is based in Bochum, Germany, with another office in Barcelona, Spain.
Zynamics, focuses on reverse-engineering tools for offensive and defensive security that help trace security exposures within applications — that is, analyzing software (malware in particular) for which no source code is available. According to Zynamics, its tools can be used to help understand security updates, identify FOSS (free and open-source software) code in binaries, and identify flaws in closed-source software and build input to trigger them.
“We are thrilled to announce that Zynamics has been acquired by Google!” read a short statement provided on Zynamics’ blog. “If you are an existing customer and do not receive our e-mail announcement within the next 48 hours, please contact us at info@zynamics.com. All press inquiries should be sent to press@google.com.”
It is an incredibly interesting and intricate problem to try to solve, which makes the Zynamics team and product a perfect fit for Google, a company that is known for tackling interesting and complicated problems. Next, a few words about Zynamics’s product portfolio that includes four analysis tools: BinDiff, BinNavi, VxClass, BinCrowd, and the PDF Dissector.
However, an official description of Zynamics states: “We offer solution that is aimed 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 numerous problems in software analysis is proper visualization, and aim to build tools that make software analysis intuitive and easy (or at least easier).”
Asked for comment, a Google representative provided this statement: “We are delighted to have the Zynamics team aboard and hope their tools and skills in fighting malware will help us better protect Google’s users.”
Also, Google has not yet specified how it will adopt the company’s products to work. The purchase price has not been disclosed, either, for that matter.
Nevertheless, we are not completely certain what the fate of the company will be, but it is obvious that its goals and expertise line up particularly well with Google’s aims in online security.
Apart for the fine list of products, Google is also gaining an excellent and experienced team — just the kind of engineers Google is renowned for hiring.