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ATstake, Inc. was a
computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...
professional services company in
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
,
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. It was founded in 1999 by
Battery Ventures Battery Ventures is an American technology-focused investment firm. Founded in 1983, the firm makes venture-capital and private-equity investments in markets across the globe from offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Israel and Lon ...
(Tom Crotty, Sunil Dhaliwal, and Scott Tobin) and Ted Julian. Its initial core team of technologists included Dan Geer (Chief Technical Officer) and the east coast security team from Cambridge Technology Partners (including Dave Goldsmith).


History

In January 2000, @stake acquired L0pht Heavy Industries (who were known for their many
hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...
employees), bringing on
Mudge Mudge is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Politics * Dirk Mudge (1928–2020), Namibian politician * Geoffrey Mudge, English politician Religion * Enoch Mudge (1776–1850), first Methodist minister reared in New England * ...
as its Vice President of Research and Development. Its
domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
was atstake.com. In July 2000, @stake acquired Cerberus Information Security Limited of London, England, from David and Mark Litchfield and Robert Stein-Rostaing, to be their launchpad into Europe, the Middle East and Africa. @stake was subsequently acquired by Symantec in 2004. In addition to Dan Geer and Mudge, @stake employed many famous security experts including
Dildog Christien Rioux, also known by his handle DilDog, is the co-founder and chief scientist for the Burlington, Massachusetts based company Veracode, for which he is the main patent holder. Educated at MIT, Rioux was a computer security researcher ...
,
Window Snyder Mwende Window Snyder (born 1975), better known as Window Snyder, is an American computer security expert. She has been a top security officer at Square, Inc., Apple, Fastly, Intel and Mozilla Corporation. She was also a Senior Security Strategist ...
,
Dave Aitel Dave Aitel (born 1976) is a computer security professional. He joined the NSA as a research scientist aged 18 where he worked for six years before being employed as a consultant at @stake for three years. In 2002 he founded a security software co ...
,
Katie Moussouris Katie Moussouris is an American computer security researcher, entrepreneur, and pioneer in vulnerability disclosure, and is best known for her ongoing work advocating responsible security research. Previously a member of @stake, she created the ...
,
David Litchfield David Litchfield (born 1975) is a British security expert and The Director of Information Security Assurance for Apple. Anne Saita, writing for ''Information Security'' magazine, called him along with his brother Mark Litchfield, "World's Best Bu ...
,
Mark Kriegsman Mark Edwin Kriegsman (born 1966) is an American entrepreneur, computer programmer, inventor, writer, and former Director of Engineering at Veracode. Open source, web, and software security work Kriegsman has been writingKriegsman, Mark"Two F ...
, Mike Schiffman,
Chris Wysopal Chris Wysopal (also known as Weld Pond) is an entrepreneur, computer security expert and co-founder and CTO of Veracode. He was a member of the high-profile hacker think tank the L0pht where he was a vulnerability researcher. Chris Wysopal was ...
,
Alex Stamos Alex Stamos is a Greek American computer scientist and adjunct professor at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is the former chief security officer (CSO) at Facebook. His planned departure from the compan ...
,
Cris Thomas Cris Thomas (also known as ''Space Rogue'') is an American cybersecurity researcher and white hat hacker. A founding member and researcher at the high-profile hacker security think tank L0pht Heavy Industries, Thomas was one of seven L0pht memb ...
, and
Joe Grand Joe Grand is an American electrical engineer, inventor and hardware hacker known in the hacker community as Kingpin. He achieved mainstream popularity after his appearance on '' Prototype This!'', a Discovery Channel television show. He spec ...
. In September 2000, an @stake recruiter contacted
Mark Abene Mark Abene (born February 23, 1972) is an American information security expert and entrepreneur, originally from New York City. Better known by his pseudonym Phiber Optik, he was once a member of the hacker groups Legion of Doom and Masters o ...
to recruit him for a security consultant position. The recruiter was apparently unaware of his past felony conviction since @stake had a policy of not hiring convicted hackers. Mark was informed by a company representative that @stake could not hire him, saying: "We ran a background check." This caused some debate regarding the role of convicted hackers working in the security business. @stake was primarily a
consulting A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...
company, but also offered information security training through the @stake academy, and created a number of software security tools: * ''LC 3'', ''LC 4'' and ''LC 5'' were versions of a password auditing and recovery tool also known as
L0phtCrack L0phtCrack is a password auditing and recovery application originally produced by Mudge from L0pht Heavy Industries. It is used to test password strength and sometimes to recover lost Microsoft Windows passwords, by using dictionary, brute-forc ...
* ''WebProxy'' was a security testing tool for Web applications * ''SmartRisk Analyzer'' was an application security analysis tool * ''The @stake Sleuth Kit (TASK)'' was an open source digital forensics tool (now called
The Sleuth Kit The Sleuth Kit (TSK) is a library and collection of Unix- and Windows-based utilities for extracting data from disk drives and other storage so as to facilitate the forensic analysis of computer systems. It forms the foundation for Autopsy, a bet ...
). Symantec later stopped selling LC5 to new customers citing US Government export regulations, and discontinued support in December 2006. In January 2009, L0phtCrack was acquired by the original authors from Symantec; L0phtCrack 6 was announced at the SOURCE Boston Conference on March 11, 2009. The technology underlying ''SmartRisk Analyzer'' was extended, and eventually brought to market by the Symantec spinoff
Veracode Veracode is an application security company based in Burlington, Massachusetts. Founded in 2006, it provides SaaS application security that integrates application analysis into development pipelines. The company provides multiple security analy ...
. Symantec announced its acquisition of @stake on September 16, 2004, and completed the transaction on October 9, 2004. Several members of @Stake left to form the computer security company "iSEC Partners" in 2004. Former @stake academy instructors Rob Cheyne and Paul Hinkle later formed the information security training company "Safelight Security Advisors" in 2007. The remaining portion of the @Stake consulting group continues to operate as the "Security Advisory Services"Symantec.com
team within Symantec's Security Business Practice.


Post @stake

Numerous @stake employees pre and post the acquisition by Symantec started their own cyber security services companies, these included: * iSec Partners, USA * ImmunitySec, USA * Matasano, USA * NGS Software, UK * Safelight Security Advisors, USA * Leviathan Security , USA * VSR, USA of these companies
NCC Group NCC Group (LSE: NCC) is an information assurance firm headquartered in Manchester, United Kingdom. Its service areas cover software escrow and verification, cyber security consulting and managed services. NCC Group claims over 15,000 clients worldw ...
latterly acquired: * NGS Software, UK * iSec Partners, USA * Matasano, USA * VSR, USA


References


External links


Company website
now redirects to Symantec {{DEFAULTSORT:Atstake Computer security software companies Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts L0pht Defunct software companies of the United States Defunct companies based in Massachusetts Gen Digital acquisitions