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Snort adds Razorback and Sourcefire adds profits

Sourcefire, which supports Snort through products and services, is reporting record earnings and a new open source security framework called Razorback.
Written by Dana Blankenhorn, Inactive

Even readers with ADHD may remember our story from Tuesday about the open source military industrial complex and a piece from last week about its possible replacement for Snort, an intrusion detection system.

The idea seems to be that military contractors will, together, copy the most useful open source tools under their own control, claiming it's for security, and thus think they are delivering on the Administration's open source promises while continuing to charge out the wazoo.

Private open source security is not amused. Snort creator Martin Roesch was quick to call the new software a cheap knock-off and, through the corporate arm of Sourcefire, deliver a good fisking.

Roesch is CTO of Sourcefire, which offers commercial support for Snort and products built around it. The company is now publicly traded under the ticker symbol FIRE and, while the stock took a hit on the Open Information Security Framework (OISF) announcement, it has since recovered.

The recovery was driven by earnings, $10.5 million in net income on $30.6 million in revenue. The company was happy to have earnings of a half-million for the same quarter a year ago. These are happy days.

During the company's earnings call its officers were quick to note that only 30% of its revenue comes from government and only two-thirds of that comes from the federal government. Even if the OISF took away its federal work, in other words, it would be OK.

But there was more good news on the call, the launch of Razorback, which combines a variety of threat detection tools into a single framework and view, speeding the creation of countermeasures. The software supports plug-ins so, if a client wants to use OISF it can, and customers can build a system customized for their toolsets.

The new software's logo (above) combines the look-and-color of the University of Arkansas' mascot with a giant vacuum-cleaner nose echoing the Snort heritage, and with a typeface that includes tiny hairs like those on a real hog's back.

It's cute, but let's hope UA doesn't call it a cheap knock-off, deliver a good fisking, then go 0-11.

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