FireEye is tech firms’ secret weapon against disinformation
NEW YORK — This week has seen major social media sites step up their policing of online disinformation campaigns.
Google disabled dozens of YouTube channels and other accounts linked to a state-run Iranian broadcaster running a political-influence campaign.
Facebook removed 652 suspicious pages, groups and accounts linked to Russia and Iran.
Twitter took similar action shortly thereafter.
What did they have in common? The security firm FireEye.
Best known for its work on high-profile cyberattacks against companies including Target, JPMorgan Chase and Sony Pictures, FireEye is emerging as a key player in the fight against election interference and disinformation campaigns.
Founded in 2004, FireEye is based in Silicon Valley and staffed with a roster of former military and law-enforcement cyberexperts.
“They’ve really become the Navy SEALs of cybersecurity, especially for next-generation cybersecurity threats,” said GBH Insights analyst Dan Ives.
Lee Foster, manager of information operations analysis at FireEye, said his team works within the company’s intelligence outfit, which researches not only “info-ops” — like the Iran-linked social media activity it recently uncovered — but espionage, financial crime and other forms of vulnerability and exploitation. Specialist teams at FireEye focus on particular areas of cyberthreats, each with their own expertise and language capabilities. “We kind of operate like a privatesector intelligence operation,” he said.
FireEye was founded by Ashar Aziz, who developed a system for spotting threats that haven’t been tracked before, unlike older companies that sold firewalls or anti-virus programs that block known malware.
Aziz, a former Sun Microsystems engineer, created a system that uses software to simulate a computer network and check programs for suspicious behavior, before allowing them into the network itself.