Abraxas and Trapwire: the technology and personnel revealed

[Magda Hassan]

TrapWire and Stratfor are business partners documentary evidence

POSTED BY DARKERNET â‹… AUGUST 15, 2012 â‹… LEAVE A COMMENT
FILED UNDER ABRAXAS, CUBIC, TRAPWIRE
Stratfor, the private Intelligence-gathering company whose emails were hacked by Anonymous then published by Wikileaks, didn't just comment on TrapWire via its emails: in August 2009 it joined with the TrapWire project via a partnership deal with Abraxas Applications. And here is thedocument to prove it. The deal explicitly states that Stratfor will supply intelligence directly into TrapWire on an ongoing basis. To see detailed analyses of Stratfor's business relationship with TrapWire (and the consequent conflict of interest) clickhere and here.So there you have it. Another piece in the jigsaw. This story gets bigger and bigger…In Australia, Greens Senator, Scott Ludlam, tried to ask a question in the Senate about whether TrapWire was deployed in Australia. He was not allowed to (the Senate voted not to answer questions on this matter). Senator Ludlam's office later issued a statement explaining that the Senator will be pursuing the matter via other channels of inquiry.Also, a representative of Cubic Corporation has posted a comment on the Darker Net article, saying "SAN DIEGO, Calif. August 13, 2012 Cubic Corporation (NYSE: CUB) acquired Abraxas Corporation on December 20, 2010. Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as TrapWire, Inc."Some background explanation is needed…Today, TrapWire software is owned by TrapWire Inc., a Reston, VA company. But it wasn't always. Abraxas Corporation created TrapWire under its subsidiary firm, Abraxas Applications Inc.. Abraxas Corporation trademarked the TrapWire software in a filing with the U.S. PTO in 2006. Abraxas Corporation is now owned by Cubic Corporation, which bought the firm in November 2010 for $124 million in cash. According to one report, Cubic acquired Abraxas Corporation after TrapWire was reorganised as a separate entity and that one of the terms of this acquisition was to "cause the corporate name of Abraxas Applications, Inc. to be changed to a name that does not include Abraxas' or any variation thereof." Also, according to a March 2007 article in the Washington Business Journal "Abraxas Corp., a risk-mitigation technology company, has spun out a software business to focus on selling a new product. The spinoff called Abraxas Applications will sell TrapWire, which predicts attacks on critical infrastructure by analyzing security reports and video surveillance". And the article continues: "Abraxas Corp. previously won contracts to test TrapWire…"Further insight is provided by Public Intelligence (renowned for its accuracy): "A proprietary white paper produced by TrapWire, formerly called Abraxas Applications, describes the product as "a unique, predictive software system designed to detect patterns of pre-attack surveillance." In an interview from 2005 with the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the CEO of Abraxas Corporation, Richard "Hollis" Helms, says the goal of TrapWire is to "collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists… The new company [Abraxas Applications] also can tap into Abraxas' [Corporation] work with defense and intelligence agencies and the connections of Abraxas founder and CEO Richard Hollis Helms, who owns both companies."So can Cubic Corporation legitimately claim not to own Abraxas Applications (which runs TrapWire)? If we go strictly by purchase dates, yes though it's common practice for a company, when acquiring another, to relinquish one part that might cause embarrassment so that on paper at least there is no longer any connection, even though some of the personnel between those companies are swapped around.Also, we should not lose sight of the range of services Cubic Corporation does admit to these are mostly defence systems and military training as well as transport smart systems and even interests in credit card management. A bizarre mix that in itself should be of concern. For example, Cubic is listed as the organisational leader for Ntrepid, a shadowy organisation that "provides national security and law enforcement customers with software, hardware, and managed services for cyber operations, analytics, linguistics, tagging and [online] tracking". Ntrepid's corporate registry in turn lists Abraxas' previous CEO and founder, Richard Helms, as a director and officer, along with Wesley Husted, the former CFO. Moreover, some of the top people at Anonymizer, who later moved to Abraxas, initially left Cubic to start another intelligence firm but are now listed as organisational leaders for Ntrepid. All very circular, to say the least…Posted from the darker net via Android.https://darkernet.wordpress.com/2012/08/...-evidence/