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Time was a hacker was a guy who wrecked computer networks, not someone who protected them. Now Web business is so hip -- not to mention
potentially lucrative -- that hackers are forming their own companies. Doing what? Protecting your system from the sort of person they
used to be.
First, the notorious L0pht hacker group founded the computer-security outfit @stake -- collecting a passel of venture capital along the way.
Now Foundstone has joined the fray. This Mission Viejo (Calif.)-based computer-security company, led by hackers Stuart McClure and George Kurtz,
just snagged $3 million from Olympic Venture Partners, a venture-capital firm in Kirkland, Wash.
Why are VCs so eager to back entrepreneurs who have what some might deem checkered pasts? (Kurtz and McClure insist they were "white hats."
In hackerspeak, that means good guys who uncovered system weaknesses and warned owners instead of stealing or destroying their data.) Judging
from the panic over recent hack attacks on major Web sites, security consulting could be next big thing. It may take a while to catch on though.
According to the market research firm International Data Corp., U.S. companies will spend only $1.6 billion in 2002 on computer-security
consultants, compared to less than a billion today. What do Foundstone and its backers hope to get out of their new entrepreneurial identities?
An IPO, of course.
By
Alex Salkever
in New York
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