Sourcefire has announced its acquisition of the open-source ClamAV gateway antivirus and antimalware project.
It appears that the deal includes all related trademarks and copyrights held by the five principal members of the open-source AV team, including project founder Tomasz Kojm.
Martin Roesch, Sourcefire’s founder and CTO, said in a statement:
[the company intends to] continue to invest in the ClamAV technology, much as we have with Snort and Snort.org.
… [Sourcefire] pioneered the business of balancing commercial solutions with open source innovation, and [it] intends to apply those same Snort sensibilities to the ClamAV project.
Snort, the well-known open-source IDS, originated from Roesch prior to his founding of Sourcefire, which was started in a bid to commercialize Snort-based intrusion-detection and intrusion-prevention systems. Snort continues to be open source today.
According to its press release, ClamAV currently has nearly one million unique IP addresses downloading ClamAV malware updates daily across 38 countries.
More than just performing AV scanning on client terminals, it’s worth noting that ClamAV has been adopted by network security solution and service providers worldwide. It is currently integrated within leading enterprise solutions, including Unified Threat Management Systems (UTM), Secure Web Gateways, and Secure Mail Gateways.
And of course, this list includes Untangle Inc, whose antivirus “fight club” caused such a furor in Verdict of “live” test: Not all antivirus tools are created equal followed by Not all AV tools are created equal: Uproar from AV vendors kicks off round two, in which the facts were set right.
Read more about this acquisition:
What do you think the eventual outcome will be of Sourcefire and ClamAV under one roof?
