Basically the Americans are saying a lot of their sensitive govermental organisations are using Snort and they don’t want the software to be controlled by an Israeli company, they see it as a threat.
The same Bush administration review panel that approved a ports deal involving the United Arab Emirates has notified a leading Israeli software company that it faces a rare, full-blown investigation over its plans to buy a smaller rival.
The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as “Snort,” which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers.
Snort’s author is a senior executive at Sourcefire Inc., which would be sold to publicly traded Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in Ramat Gan, Israel. Sourcefire is based in Columbia, Md.
Check Point was told U.S. officials feared the transaction could endanger some of government’s most sensitive computer systems. The company announced it had agreed to acquire Sourcefire in October.
Is it really a threat?
I’m guessing from this though that the US government then doesn’t use ANY Checkpoint devices or software in any of its organisations.
The ongoing 45-day investigation into the Israeli deal is only the 26th of its type conducted among 1,600 business transactions reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. The panel, facing criticism by Congress about its scrutiny of the ports deal, judges the security risks of foreign companies buying or investing in American industry.
I wonder what the outcome is going to be.
Let’s hope the whole thing is dealt with properly.
Source: Redmond Mag – (Slashdot)
Sure, it’s a serious threat: it threatens the US’s economy if the ownership of that company went abroad. It doesn’t matter that the company is from Israel as it has nothing to do with politics, or fear of backdoor-ed software, it’s all about economics.
From a technical point of view, it doesn’t really matter what company owns the code as long as the code stays the samen, no?
It seems US policy to keep everything, which is successful and has the potential to make money, inside.