Greg Hoglund


HBGary’s Greg Hoglund: The Art Of RAT Hunting In the Enterprise

Threatpost spent much of the last year chasing after Greg Hoglund, the founder and CEO of HB Gary. First, it was to get his reaction to the bruising encounter his firm had with the hacking group Anonymous. Then it was an endless series of requests on the aftermath of that hack, including the departure of HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr, and the company’s decision to pull out of the RSA Conference in 2011. When Greg finally did speak out it wasn’t to us.So we were happy when Hoglund, whose firm was recently acquired by the company Mantech International Corp., agreed to speak at the Kaspersky Lab Security Analysts’ Summit in Cancun, Mexico in February. His talk there on “Lateral Movement and Other APT Interaction Patterns Within the Enterprise” reinforced Hoglund’s reputation as one of the top experts on malicious code.Threatpost editor Paul Roberts caught up with Hoglund after the speech. And, while Anonymous and HBGary Federal were not up for discussion on the record, Hoglund offered some great insights into the delicate art of tracking down remote access trojans (or RATs) after they have a foothold in your network, as well as the mistakes companies make in trying to prevent and respond to security incidents.

HBGary CEO Speaks Out On Anonymous Hack

Greg Hoglund, CEO of HBGary, admits that lackluster security at his company played a central role in the breach that led to the release of some 50,000 company emails, but also disputes common understanding and reported details of the hack and the group behind it, going so far as to say there was actually no hack at all.


Greg Hoglund, CTO of HBGary, admits that lackluster security played a central role in the breach that led to the release of some 50,000 company emails, but also disputes common understanding and reported details of the hack, going so far as to say there was actually no hack at all.

There was lots of noise and distraction on the crowded Expo floor of the RSA Security Conference this year. After a grueling couple of years, vendors were back in force with big booths, big news and plenty of entertainment designed to attract visitor traffic. Wandering the floor, I saw – variously – magic tricks, a man walking on stilts, a whack-a-mole game, a man dressed in a full suit of armor and a 15 foot long racetrack that I would have killed for when I was 10.

A researcher at Black Hat USA next month plans
to give away a homemade tool that helps organizations glean intelligence about the attacker behind the malware that includes information about native tongue, geographic location, and
ties to other attacks. Read the full article. [Dark Reading]

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