Bitdefender

Bitdefender is a Romanian cybersecurity technology company headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, with offices in the United States, Europe, Australia and the Middle East.[1][2]

Bitdefender
TypePrivate
IndustryComputer software
FoundedNovember 6, 2001 (2001-11-06)
FounderFlorin Talpeș
HeadquartersBucharest, Romania

Santa Clara, California
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Florin Talpeș (CEO)
ProductsCybersecurity software
ServicesComputer security
Number of employees
1,600+ (2023)
Websitewww.bitdefender.com

The company was founded in 2001 by the current CEO and main shareholder, Florin Talpeș. Bitdefender develops and delivers cybersecurity products and services, including endpoint protection, cloud and managed security, antivirus software and IoT security. Bitdefender products are distributed through partners in over 150 countries[2] and the US market is estimated to generate more than 40% of its revenues. As of 2020, the company employed more than 1,600 people worldwide.[2]

As of August 2021, Bitdefender was ranked 5th globally among Microsoft Windows anti-malware application vendors by market scores.[3]

History

Bitdefender software was originally developed by SOFTWIN and sold as AVX (Antivirus Expert) from 1996 until 2001, when its name was changed. In 2007, SOFTWIN spun off Bitdefender.[4]

Company milestones

1990: Creation of Softwin, one of the first IT start-ups in post-communist Romania.

The rapid growth of computer viruses leads to the development of Softwin AVX (AntiVirus eXpert)

2001: The Bitdefender subsidiary is created. AVX solution is rebranded under the Bitdefender name.

2004: First offices outside Romania in US, Germany and UK.

Further expansion in the Middle East (2011), and Denmark / Nordics Region (2015).

2007: Bitdefender becomes a separate business entity with external capital entry.

Axxess Capital Investment Fund becomes a key shareholder.[5]

2011: Bitdefender launches enterprise range and virtualization security products.

2015: Bitdefender creates a new consumer product category with Bitdefender BOX and IoT security services.[6]

2017: Bitdefender makes its first major acquisition by acquiring French partner Profil Technology Source.[7]

British fund Vitruvian buys a 30% stake in the Bitdefender, valuing Bitdefender at more than $600 million.[8]

2018: Bitdefender creates a new subsidiary in Australia through the acquisition of assets from business partner SMS eTech.[9]

Bitdefender acquires behavioral and network security analytics company RedSocks.[10]

2019: Bitdefender opens its own Security Operations Center in San Antonio, Texas.

2021: Bitdefender unveils its extended detection and response (XDR) platform, offering business customers further visibility and incident context during investigations to accelerate threat validation, response actions and remediation.[11]

2022: Bitdefender signed a multi-year partnership deal with Scuderia Ferrari on September 28.[12][13]

Bitdefender products

Bitdefender develops cybersecurity solutions for businesses and consumers. It offers a range of products and services including endpoint protection, cloud security, and managed detection & response. Its flagship product is Bitdefender Antivirus which protects against viruses, spyware, malware, phishing attacks, ransomware, and other threats.

Fighting cyber-crime

Bitdefender advises Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) in supporting investigations into criminal activity in cyberspace, sharing relevant data and knowledge about disruption, prevention, investigation and prosecution. The company is involved in ongoing cooperation with international law enforcement actors such as local, regional and international police offices to support the fight against crime.[14][15]

Bitdefender is also part of the Cybersecurity Tech Accord for a safer online world, a collaboration among global technology companies committed to protecting their customers and users and helping them defend against malicious threats.[16]

Starting with 2016, Bitdefender has been part of the No More Ransom initiative. Since then, 32 new decryption tools have been added to nomoreransom.org. So far, over 55,000 victims were able to successfully decrypt their devices without having to pay criminals to do so.[17]

In 2017, authorities have given a massive blow to criminal Dark Web activities  after a globally coordinated operation. With the help of Bitdefender, Europol provided Dutch authorities with an investigation lead into Hansa in 2016.[18]

In 2018, a universal GandCrab decryption tool was released for free. This data recovery kit was developed by the Romanian Police in collaboration with its counterparts from Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States, together with the security company Bitdefender and Europol.[19]

Sipuli Dark Market was shut down in 2019 by Europol and the Finnish Customs. Bitdefender provided operational support and technical expertise, including hosting the seizure banner.[20]

In 2019, the Silkkitie (known as the Valhalla Marketplace) and its contents was also seized by Finnish Customs (Tulli) in close cooperation with the French National Police (La Police Nationale Française) and Europol. Europol was assisted by Bitdefender.[21][22]

In November 2021, Romanian authorities arrested two individuals suspected of cyber-attacks deploying the Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware. They are allegedly responsible for 5,000 infections, which in total pocketed half a million euros in ransom payments. On the Revil case, Bitdefender has provided investigation support and decryption tools.[23]

Independent tests

Bitdefender has won a number of awards from AV-Comparatives, an anti-virus assessment firm.[24][25]

The “Product of the Year” award for the best overall results went to Bitdefender, for its performance in 2022 Main-Test Series. Both the Consumer and Enterprise Main-Test Series consist of a number of different individual tests, which together provide an all-round assessment of the products’ capabilities.[26]

Strategic Leader in Endpoint Protection and Response for GravityZone Business Security Enterprise (2022). AV-Comparatives’ Endpoint Prevention and Response Test is the most comprehensive test of EPR products ever performed. The 10 products in the test were subjected to 50 separate targeted attack scenarios, which used a variety of different techniques.[27]

The 2022 Award from AV-TEST in the test category of Best Android Security for Consumer Users was given to Bitdefender. The protection app from Bitdefender showed in the lab tests in the year 2022 that it can flawlessly protect Android consumer smartphones or tablets. In one year of tests, the security products are examined and evaluated multiple times in the test areas of Protection (protection function), Performance (speed) and Usability (user-friendliness).[28]

Controversies and incidents

Trojan.FakeAlert.5

On March 20, 2010, computers running Bitdefender under 64-bit versions of Windows were affected by a malfunctioning update that classified every executable program as well as dll files as infected. These files were all marked as 'Trojan.FakeAlert.5' and were moved into quarantine. This action led to software and systems malfunctions that affected users around the world.[29] Bitdefender representatives announced the removal of the faulty update and a workaround for the users affected,[30] except for those using the 2008 version.[31]

DarkSide ransomware

In 2021, Bitdefender was accused of self-promotion when releasing and publicly announcing a decryptor to the detriment of actual victims with regards to DarkSide, a hacking group. In 2020, DarkSide switched their main encryption ransomware product over to an "affiliate" model wherein other attackers could download and use their software in exchange for a portion of the profits. However, they introduced a bug in the process where affiliate hackers would all use the same private RSA key - meaning that a decryption package for a single target who paid the ransom would work on any target that had the ransomware installed. Security researchers noticed and were quietly already helping victims of the software, but with no public notice, making it so that the attackers would only see an inexplicable decrease in ransom payments that could be written off as chance. At about the same time, Bitdefender researchers developed a decryptor and issued a blog post in January 2021 describing the flaw and offering the decryptor as a free download, in order to make as many organizations as possible aware of its existence to reduce the impact of Darkside ransomware attacks. This was criticized in an article in the MIT Technology Review: claiming, first, Bitdefender's program wasn't even safe - it was flawed and would "damage" files decrypted with it due to bugs within it. Second, the blog post tipped off DarkSide as to the nature of the flaw; DarkSide promptly patched the bug and sarcastically thanked Bitdefender for pointing it out, then went on with their campaign of extortion. A notable incident that took place after Bitdefender's public disclosure was the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack in May 2021. While the security researchers who had been using the flaw before acknowledge that it's probable DarkSide would eventually have noticed and fixed the issue, they still criticized Bitdefender for using the bug merely for a brief burst of publicity, rather than in the way that would most help victims of the scheme.[32] Bitdefender has defended their actions on their blog.[33] The article and blog post triggered a discussion among cybersecurity professionals about the pros and cons of publicly disclosing decryptors.

REvil Ransomware

In September 2021, Bitdefender published a universal decryptor utility that will help past victims of the REvil ransomware recover their encrypted files.[34]

See also

References
  1. "Interview with Florin Talpes, CEO at Bitdefender". Archived from the original on 2 November 2013. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  2. "Bitdefender Long Description". Bitdefender. Archived from the original on 5 February 2011. Retrieved 31 July 2017.
  3. "Market scores held by the leading Windows anti-malware application vendors worldwide as of August 2021". Statista. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  4. "Definition of: Bitdefender". PC Magazine Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17 May 2019.
  5. "M&A alert. Vitruvian Partners buys stake in Bitdefender from Axxess Capital". Business Review (in Romanian). 1 December 2017. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  6. "IoT News - Bitdefender BOX : the ultimate security solution for smart home environments?". IoT Business News. 6 December 2017. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  7. "Romania's Bitdefender buys France's Profil Technology". seenews.com. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  8. Ilie, Luiza (1 December 2017). "Vitruvian buys 30 pct stake in Romanian cyber security firm Bitdefender". Reuters. Retrieved 19 January 2023.
  9. "Romania's Bitdefender buys Australian partner SMS eTech". seenews.com. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  10. Bitdefender. "Bitdefender Acquires Behavioral and Network Security Analytics Company RedSocks". www.prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  11. "Bitdefender Unveils the Next Evolution of Endpoint Detection and Response Solutions - eXtended EDR (XEDR)". www.prnewswire.com (Press release).
  12. "Bitdefender Team Partner - Ferrari.com". www.ferrari.com. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  13. "Bitdefender's Partnership with Scuderia Ferrari". Bitdefender. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  14. "Bitdefender, Europol, Romanian and French Police, FBI Team up for Fourth GandCrab Decryptor". www.bitdefender.com. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  15. "Appointment of new members of the EC3 Advisory Groups". European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
  16. "Cybersecurity Tech Accord". Cybersecurity Tech Accord. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  17. "No More Ransom: new partners, new decryption tools, new languages to better fight ransomware". European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
  18. "Massive blow to criminal Dark Web activities after globally coordinated operation". European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
  19. "Pay No More: universal GandCrab decryption tool released for free on No More Ransom". European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
  20. "Finnish Customs take down Sipulimarket on the dark web with Europol support". European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
  21. "Double blow to dark web marketplaces". European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
  22. Cox, Joseph. "Europol Head Tells Us About its Dark Web Market Sting". VICE.
  23. "Five affiliates to Sodinokibi/REvil unplugged". European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
  24. "Awards". AV-Comparatives. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  25. "Test antivirus software Bitdefender". www.av-test.org (in German). Retrieved 15 January 2021.
  26. "AV-Comparatives Awards". 24 February 2023.
  27. "EPR Comparative Report 2022" (PDF).
  28. Selinger, Markus. "AV-TEST Award 2022 for Bitdefender".
  29. McMillan, Robert. "Bad Bitdefender Update Clobbers Windows PCs". PC World. Archived from the original on 27 October 2010. Retrieved 17 September 2017.
  30. "Trojan.FakeAlert.5 Update issue". Archived from the original on 24 March 2010.
  31. Peter Bright (22 March 2010). "Bitdefender update breaks 64-bit Windows PCs".
  32. Dudley, Renee; Golden, Daniel (24 May 2021). "The Colonial pipeline ransomware hackers had a secret weapon: self-promoting cybersecurity firms". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
  33. "Bitdefender's Position on Ransomware Attacks and Decryptors". businessinsights.bitdefender.com.
  34. Arjun Ramprasad (18 September 2021). "Universal decryptor for past REvil ransomware victims released". Preview Tech. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
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