Type Subsidiary Number of locations United States, India Founded November 1997 Parent organizations Boeing, Symantec | Industry Software Headquarters California, United States | |
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Products Originally a company focused on telecommunications billing and customer market intelligence. After 2001 the company pivoted towards providing network intelligence gathering software to governments around the world. Locations United States of America, India | ||
Narus Inc. was a software company and vendor of big data analytics for cybersecurity.
Contents
History
In 1997, Ori Cohen, Vice President of Business and Technology Development for VDONet, founded Narus with Stas Khirman in Israel. Presently, they are employed with Deutsche Telekom AG and are not members of Narus' Executive Team. In 2010, Narus became a subsidiary of Boeing, located in Sunnyvale, California. In 2014, Narus was sold to Symantec.
Management
In 2004, Narus employed former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, William Crowell as a director. From the Press Release announcing this:
Crowell is an independent security consultant and holds several board positions with a variety of technology and technology-based security companies.
Since 11 September 2001, Crowell served on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Task Force on Terrorism and Deterrence, the National Research Council Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism and the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.
Narus Software
Narus is one of the first companies to combine patented machine learning algorithms, automation, and data fusion technologies to provide the incisive intelligence, context, and control network operators need to protect against cyberthreats and ensure information security.
Narus software primarily captures various computer network traffic in real time and analyzes results.
Prior to 9/11 Narus worked on building carrier-grade tools to analyze IP network traffic for billing purposes, to prevent what NARUS called "revenue leakage". Post-9/11 Narus added more "semantic monitoring abilities" for surveillance.
NarusInsight
Narus is noted for having created NarusInsight, a supercomputer system, whose installation in AT&T's San Francisco Internet backbone gave rise to a 2006 class action lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, Hepting v. AT&T.
System specification and capabilities
Some features of NarusInsight include:
The intercepted data flows into NarusInsight Intercept Suite. This data is stored and analyzed for surveillance and forensic analysis.
Other capabilities include playback of streaming media (i.e., VoIP), rendering of web pages, examination of e-mail and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols. Narus partner products, such as Pen-Link, offer the ability to quickly analyze information collected by the Directed Analysis or Lawful Intercept modules.
A single NarusInsight machine can monitor traffic equal to the maximum capacity (10 Gbit/s) of around 39,000 256k DSL lines or 195,000 56k telephone modems. But, in practical terms, since individual internet connections are not continually filled to capacity, the 10 Gbit/s capacity of one NarusInsight installation enables it to monitor the combined traffic of several million broadband users.
According to a year 2007 company press release, the latest version of NarusInsight Intercept Suite (NIS) is "the industry's only network traffic intelligence system that supports real-time precision targeting, capturing and reconstruction of webmail traffic... including Google Gmail, MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail". However, currently most webmail traffic can be HTTPS encrypted, so the content of messages can only be monitored with the consent of service providers.
NarusInsight can also perform semantic analysis of the same traffic as it is happening, in other words analyze the content, meaning, structure and significance of traffic in real time. The exact use of this data is not fully documented, as the public is not authorized to see what types of activities and ideas are being monitored. Ed Snowden's June 2013 releases about PRISM (surveillance program) have made clear however that Narus has played a central role.
Mobile
Narus provided Telecom Egypt with deep packet inspection equipment, a content-filtering technology that allows network managers to inspect, track and target content from users of the Internet and mobile phones, as it passes through routers. The national telecommunications authorities of both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are global Narus customers.
AT&T wiretapping room
Narus supplied the software and hardware used at AT&T wiretapping rooms, according to whistleblowers Thomas Drake, and Mark Klein.