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back to article US gov IT services vendor swallows HBGary

US government IT services firm ManTech International has bought HBGary, the network forensics and malware analysis firm best known for last year's hack by Anonymous against its now-defunct sister firm, HBGary Federal. Financial terms of the deal, announced Monday, were not disclosed other than to say it was an "asset purchase …

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  1. Piro Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I'd just like to say..

    ... Fine work on the headline and sub-heading.

    Also, always good to remember how badly HBGary, a security services firm, made an embarrassment of themselves.

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  2. Muckminded
    Joke

    Cockup at ManTech

    That is all.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    why would you want to buy a god-forbidden company with poor self-security records...? unless its all a cover up and now brought out by ManTech means new branding, new face :)

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    ...and am I alone in thinking that HBGary

    comes across as a silly name for a company anyway?

    I think I will register BOFred with companies house. Just because I can.

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  5. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    HBGary Federal

    HBGary Federal was not the sister company but a spinoff more like daughter company), officially to sell products to the US federal government without the mother company having to comply to federal rules (which would have hurt it's "civil" business). And less officially, presumably as a measure of distanciation because the fine people at HBGary (mother company) knew that the "social media intelligence" they were trying to peddle to the Feds was flaky at best.

    On the other hand, HBGary Federal remained very much rooted into it's mother infrastructure, which means that it was HBGary, not only HBGary Federal, that was pwned by anonymous (although by a social engineering targetted at HBGary Federal).

    Just sayin'

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Very entertaining...

    Reading the chat logs of the respective CEOs and President for HBG and HBGF reasoning and pleading with Anonymous on pastebin.

    At one point, IIRC, Penny Leavy (HBG) actually floated the genuine question to Anon that if they (HBG) sacked Barr would Anon leave them alone. It felt like reading the transcript of some whacky shareholder meeting where the shareholders were all asylum inmates*.

    *no disrespect intended to Anon.

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  7. AnonymousNow

    Let's not forget that Barr, who is heavily connected with the US security state and held security clearance at all applicable times, also proposed outright destroying Glenn Greenwald, the most relevant columnist of this era, as part of his criminal campaign to destroy Wikileaks. Methinks that most criminals are in the government and go completely unpunished these days.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Before anything got sold...

    The scummy criminals should have been arrested and the whole thing dismantled. All government contracts by them ought to be nullified. Any damages they did to innocent people they ought to have taken out of their asses first, then anything left sell it.

    HBGary is a risk to national security, and a direct threat to the US Constitution, doing business with them ought to be TREASON.

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