HBGary

[Magda Hassan]

Pursuant to our ongoing investigation into the various intelligence contractors who worked in conjunction with the Department of Justice and other agencies to commit unethical and possibly illegal acts against Wikileaks, Glenn Greenwald, and Anonymous, I placed a call this morning to William Wansley, senior vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton. I asked Mr. Wansley about his relationship to incompetent federal contractor and former HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, who himself was fundamental to the conspiracy linking his company to Palantir, Hunton Williams, Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, Endgame Systems, and other entities, including Booz. He said he had no relationship with HBGary, which is odd insomuch as that this e-mail would seem to indicate otherwise.
Incidentally, I made the call from a one-party consent wiretapping state - good old Texas - pursuant to an investigation by Anonymous Holdings Company LLC/Anonymous Institute of the Rule of LAWL, which is to say it is entirely legal for me to record such a conversation and, say, upload it to the internet.


A bit of inside baseball background on Booz Allen Hamilton's interest in Anonymous is provided by way of this other e-mail thread, also taken from HBGary's servers in pursuit of etc etc etc lol:
I forgot to mention. I had a meeting yesterday with Bill Wansley over at Booz yesterday. He said Mike McConnell is walking around like the cat that got the canary because their is something to happen or be released soon that is very significant in the cyber arena. Any knowledge? Aaron
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 29, 2011, at 7:58 AM, Tom Conroy wrote:
> Aaron -
>
> Here is the note I sent to a senior at USCYBERCOM. I'll let you know if I hear back.
>
> As you can see, I took off your email address to protect you from immediate attention, though it would be easy to identify you by checking the speakers at the conference you reference. Let's see what they do with our offer.
>
> BTW, if they do research your identity by going to the online B-Sides agenda, what are they going to think of you when they see the title you've chosen? You have certainly chosen a topic that will generate lots of interest.
> Name: Aaron Barr
> Talk: Who Needs NSA when we have Social Media
>
> Tom
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Fwd: Ongoing Research
> Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 07:48:35 -0500
> From: Tom Conroy
> To: Dave
>
>
> Dave -
>
> This comes to me from someone I trust deeply and who has developed some
> extraordinarily valuable and effective capabilities for our former
> agency. He is fully SCI cleared. When I first heard of Aaron's work I
> figured you, or someone in your organization, would or should be
> extremely interested in learning about his work before he takes it public.
>
> When Aaron first mentioned his research, he told me that the "Anonymous"
> group has also been directly involved in Cyber attacks on MasterCard,
> and the governments and nations of Venezuela, Tunisia, and Egypt. That,
> it seems to me, would make them of high interest to the State Department
> and FBI as well as your organization. Please let me know if you would
> like to meet him.
>
> Tom
>
> P.S. I have also encouraged him to offer his research to ODNI and to
> others. In response to my encouragement he has reached out to Dawn
> Meyerriecks at ODNI as well as others whom I don't know.
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Ongoing Research
> Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 01:23:57 -0500
> From: Aaron
> To: Tom Conroy
>
>
>
> Tom,
>
> I have been researching the Anonymous group over the last few weeks in
> preparation for a social media talk I will be giving at the BSIDES
> conference in San Francisco on Feb. 14th. My focus is to show the power
> of social media analytics to derive intelligence and for potential
> exploitation. In the talk I will be focusing how effective it is to
> penetrate three organizations, one military (INSCOM), one Critical
> Infrastructure (Nuclear Power Plant in PA), and the Anonymous Group.
> All penetrations passed social media exploitation are inferred (i.e. I
> am not delivering any payload).
>
> I am surprised at the level of success I am having on the Anonymous
> group. I am able to tie IRC Alias to Facebook account to real people.
> I have laid out the organizations communications and operational
> structure. Determined the leadership of the organization (mostly - some
> more work here to go).
>
> I have to believe this data would be valuable to someone in government,
> and if so I would like to get this data in front of those that are
> interested prior to my talk, as I imagine I will get some press around
> the talk and the group will likely change certain TTP's afterwards.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Aaron

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/13...ught-Lying

[Magda Hassan]

Congress Opens Investigation Into HBGary Federal Scandal


Mar. 17 2011 - 7:38 pm | 1,951 views | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
By PARMY OLSON
==UPDATE===: Following a query by Twitter user @Shoq, here are the 16 other Congressmen/women who signed Rep. Hank Johnson's letter seeking an investigation into HBGary Federal and others, via Salon: Keith Ellison, Luis Gutierrez, Jesse Jackson Jr., Sheila Jackson Lee, Chris Murphy, Edolphus Towns, Betty Sutton, Peter Welch, Raul Grijalva, Bruce Braley, Mike Honda, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, Tim Ryan, Pete Stark and Maxine Waters.
-
The U.S. Congress is stepping into the continuing HBGary Federal scandal after global hacktivist group Anonymous exposed proposals by the government-contracted software security firm to damage WikiLeaks and other organizations.
The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on Wednesday asked the Defence Department and National Security Agency (NSA) to hand over all contracts they had signed with HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies, Wired reports.
It comes after about a dozen members of Congress sent a letter to several subcommittees calling for an investigation into HBGary Federal's proposals, in league with other companies, to law firm Hunton & Williams to probe and discredit WikiLeaks with a "dirty tricks campaign that included possible illegal actions against citizens engaged in free speech."
Last month a small team of Anonymous supporters hacked into HBGary Federal's servers, then stole and published 71,800 emails from the security firm on the Internet. In the fallout, the e-mails revealed that HBGary Federal, had proposed together with Palantir and Berico, cyber attacks against WikiLeaks, a misinformation campaign against the group and intimidation tactics against Salon reporter Glenn Greenwald who has supported WikiLeaks.
The letter said that the HBGary Federal emails also revealed that the security contractors along with Hunton & Williams had also "planned a campaign to sabotage and discredit critics of the U.S. Chamber of COmmerce," as well as the trade union federation Change to Win, the Center for American Progress and other organizations.
The e-mails showed that one of the contractors' proposals was to mine social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for information on Chamber critics, then plant false documentation using "fake insider personas" to discredit the group. They also discussed using malicious software (or malware) to steal private information.
Following press reports into these proposals, Palantir and Berico publicly distanced themselves from HBGary Federal, while HBGary Federal's CEO Aaron Barr, who was a central character in last month's hacking incident, resigned.
Via Wired, here's a video of the Congressional subcommittee hearing in which Rep. Hank Johnson questions NSA director Keith Alexander and James Miller, deputy under secretary of defence for policy, on the nature of the HBGary Federal contracts.
http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/...y-scandal/

[Ed Jewett]

Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon

A Silicon Valley startup that collates threats has quietly become indispensable to the U.S. intelligence community

By Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone
In October, a foreign national named Mike Fikri purchased a one-way plane ticket from Cairo to Miami, where he rented a condo. Over the previous few weeks, he'd made a number of large withdrawals from a Russian bank account and placed repeated calls to a few people in Syria. More recently, he rented a truck, drove to Orlando, and visited Walt Disney World by himself. As numerous security videos indicate, he did not frolic at the happiest place on earth. He spent his day taking pictures of crowded plazas and gate areas.
None of Fikri's individual actions would raise suspicions. Lots of people rent trucks or have relations in Syria, and no doubt there are harmless eccentrics out there fascinated by amusement park infrastructure. Taken together, though, they suggested that Fikri was up to something. And yet, until about four years ago, his pre-attack prep work would have gone unnoticed. A CIA analyst might have flagged the plane ticket purchase; an FBI agent might have seen the bank transfers. But there was nothing to connect the two. Lucky for counterterror agents, not to mention tourists in Orlando, the government now has software made by Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley company that's become the darling of the intelligence and law enforcement communities.
The day Fikri drives to Orlando, he gets a speeding ticket, which triggers an alert in the CIA's Palantir system. An analyst types Fikri's name into a search box and up pops a wealth of information pulled from every database at the government's disposal. There's fingerprint and DNA evidence for Fikri gathered by a CIA operative in Cairo; video of him going to an ATM in Miami; shots of his rental truck's license plate at a tollbooth; phone records; and a map pinpointing his movements across the globe. All this information is then displayed on a clearly designed graphical interface that looks like something Tom Cruise would use in a Mission: Impossible movie.
As the CIA analyst starts poking around on Fikri's file inside of Palantir, a story emerges. A mouse click shows that Fikri has wired money to the people he had been calling in Syria. Another click brings up CIA field reports on the Syrians and reveals they have been under investigation for suspicious behavior and meeting together every day over the past two weeks. Click: The Syrians bought plane tickets to Miami one day after receiving the money from Fikri. To aid even the dullest analyst, the software brings up a map that has a pulsing red light tracing the flow of money from Cairo and Syria to Fikri's Miami condo. That provides local cops with the last piece of information they need to move in on their prey before he strikes.
Fikri isn't realhe's the John Doe example Palantir uses in product demonstrations that lay out such hypothetical examples. The demos let the company show off its technology without revealing the sensitive work of its clients. Since its founding in 2004, the company has quietly developed an indispensable tool employed by the U.S. intelligence community in the war on terrorism. Palantir technology essentially solves the Sept. 11 intelligence problem. The Digital Revolution dumped oceans of data on the law enforcement establishment but provided feeble ways to make sense of it. In the months leading up to the 2001 attacks, the government had all the necessary clues to stop the al Qaeda perpetrators: They were from countries known to harbor terrorists, who entered the U.S. on temporary visas, had trained to fly civilian airliners, and purchased one-way airplane tickets on that terrible day.
An organization like the CIA or FBI can have thousands of different databases, each with its own quirks: financial records, DNA samples, sound samples, video clips, maps, floor plans, human intelligence reports from all over the world. Gluing all that into a coherent whole can take years. Even if that system comes together, it will struggle to handle different types of datasales records on a spreadsheet, say, plus video surveillance images. What Palantir (pronounced Pal-an-TEER) does, says Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner (IT), is "make it really easy to mine these big data sets." The company's software pulls off one of the great computer science feats of the era: It combs through all available databases, identifying related pieces of information, and puts everything together in one place.
Depending where you fall on the spectrum between civil liberties absolutism and homeland security lockdown, Palantir's technology is either creepy or heroic. Judging by the company's growth, opinion in Washington and elsewhere has veered toward the latter. Palantir has built a customer list that includes the U.S. Defense Dept., CIA, FBI, Army, Marines, Air Force, the police departments of New York and Los Angeles, and a growing number of financial institutions trying to detect bank fraud. These deals have turned the company into one of the quietest success stories in Silicon Valleyit's on track to hit $250 million in sales this yearand a candidate for an initial public offering. Palantir has been used to find suspects in a case involving the murder of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent, and to uncover bombing networks in Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. "It's like plugging into the Matrix," says a Special Forces member stationed in Afghanistan who requested anonymity out of security concerns. "The first time I saw it, I was like, Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.' "

Palantir's engineers fill the former headquarters of Facebook along University Avenue in the heart of Palo Alto's main commercial district. Over the past few years, Palantir has expanded to four other nearby buildings as well. Its security peoplewho wear black gloves and Secret Service-style earpiecesoften pop out of the office to grab their lunch, making downtown Palo Alto feel, at times, a bit like Langley.
Inside the offices, sweeping hand-drawn murals fill the walls, depicting tributes to Care Bears and the TV show Futurama. On one floor, a wooden swing hangs from the ceiling by metal chains, while Lord of the Rings knickknacks sit on desks. T-shirts with cutesy cartoon characters are everywhere, since the engineers design one for each new version of their software. Of late, they've run out of Care Bears to put on the shirts and moved on to My Little Ponies.
The origins of Palantir go back to PayPal, the online payments pioneer founded in 1998. A hit with consumers and businesses, PayPal also attracted criminals who used the service for money laundering and fraud. By 2000, PayPal looked like "it was just going to go out of business" because of the cost of keeping up with the bad guys, says Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder.
The antifraud tools of the time could not keep up with the crooks. PayPal's engineers would train computers to look out for suspicious transfersa number of large transactions between U.S. and Russian accounts, for exampleand then have human analysts review each flagged deal. But each time PayPal cottoned to a new ploy, the criminals changed tactics. The computers would miss these shifts, and the humans were overwhelmed by the explosion of transactions the company handled.
PayPal's computer scientists set to work building a software system that would treat each transaction as part of a pattern rather than just an entry in a database. They devised ways to get information about a person's computer, the other people he did business with, and how all this fit into the history of transactions. These techniques let human analysts see networks of suspicious accounts and pick up on patterns missed by the computers. PayPal could start freezing dodgy payments before they were processed. "It saved hundreds of millions of dollars," says Bob McGrew, a former PayPal engineer and the current director of engineering at Palantir.
After EBay (EBAY) acquired PayPal in 2002, Thiel left to start a hedge fund, Clarium Capital Management. He and Joe Lonsdale, a Clarium executive who'd been a PayPal intern, decided to turn PayPal's fraud detection into a business by building a data analysis system that married artificial intelligence software with human skills. Washington, they guessed, would be a natural place to begin selling such technology. "We were watching the government spend tens of billions on information systems that were just horrible," Lonsdale says. "Silicon Valley had gotten to be a lot more advanced than government contractors, because the government doesn't have access to the best engineers."
Thiel, Lonsdale, and a couple of former colleagues officially incorporated Palantir in 2004. Thiel originally wanted to hire a chief executive officer from Washington who could navigate the Byzantine halls of the military-industrial complex. His co-founders resisted and eventually asked Alex Karp, an American money manager living in Europe who had been helping raise money for Clarium, to join as temporary CEO.
It was an unlikely match. Before joining Palantir, Karp had spent years studying in Germany under Jürgen Habermas, the most prominent living representative of the Frankfurt School, the group of neo-Marxist philosophers and sociologists. After getting a PhD in philosophy from the University of Frankfurthe also has a degree from Stanford Law SchoolKarp drifted from academia and dabbled in stocks. He proved so good at it that, with the backing of a handful of European billionaires, he set up a money management firm called the Caedmon Group. His intellect, and ability to solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute, commands an awed reverence around the Palantir offices, where he's known as Dr. Karp.
In the early days, Palantir struggled to sell its message and budding technology to investors. Big-name venture capital firms such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, and Greylock Partners all passed. Lonsdale says one investor, whom he won't name, actually started laughing on the phone at Karp's nonbusiness academic credentials. Overlooked by the moneyed institutions on Sand Hill Road, Thiel put up the original funds before enticing In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, to invest as well. Karp says the reason VC firms "passed was that enterprise technology was not hot. And the government was, and still is, anti-hot."
Michael E. Leiter, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, recalls being skeptical when Karp arrived to sell Palantir's system to the NCTC, created by President George W. Bush after the attacks. "There's Karp with his hair and his outfithe doesn't look like me or the other people that work for me," he says. But Leiter soon discovered that Palantir's software cost a fraction of competing products and actually worked. Palantir not only made the connections between the data sets but also drew inferences based on the clues and empowered the analysts. Leiter is now a Palantir consultant.

At 44, Karp has a thin, sinewy physiquethe result of a strict 1,200-calorie-a-day dietand an angular face that gives way to curly brown, mad-scientist hair. On a November visit at Palantir's headquarters, he's wearing purple pants and a blue and orange athletic shirt. As he does every day, he walked to work. "I never learned to drive because I was busy reading, doing things, and talking to people," he says. "And I'm coordinated enough to bike, but the problem is that I will start dreaming about the business and run into a tree."
During the era of social networks, online games, and Web coupons, Karp and his engineers have hit on a grander mission. "Our primary motivation," Karp says, "is executing against the world's most important problems in this country and allied countries." That's an unusual pitch in Silicon Valley, where companies tend to want as little to do with Washington as possible and many of the best engineers flaunt their counterculture leanings.
Palantir's name refers to the "seeing stones" in Lord of the Rings that provide a window into other parts of Middle-earth. They're magical tools created by elves that can serve both good and evil. Bad wizards use them to keep in touch with the overlord in Mordor; good wizards can peer into them to check up on the peaceful, innocent Hobbits of the Shire. As Karp explains with a straight face, his company's grand, patriotic mission is to "protect the Shire."
Most of Palantir's government work remains classified, but information on some cases has trickled out. In April 2010, security researchers in Canada used Palantir's software to crack a spy operation dubbed Shadow Network that had, among other things, broken into the Indian Defense Ministry and infiltrated the Dalai Lama's e-mail account. Palantir has also been used to unravel child abuse and abduction cases. Palantir "gives us the ability to do the kind of link-and-pattern analysis we need to build cases, identify perpetrators, and rescue children," says Ernie Allen, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The software recently helped NCMEC analysts link an attempted abduction with previous reports of the suspect to the center's separate cyber-tip lineand plot that activity on a map. "We did it within 30 seconds," Allen says. "It is absolutely a godsend for us."
In Afghanistan, U.S. Special Operations Forces use Palantir to plan assaults. They type a village's name into the system and a map of the village appears, detailing the locations of all reported shooting skirmishes and IED, or improvised explosive device, incidents. Using the timeline function, the soldiers can see where the most recent attacks originated and plot their takeover of the village accordingly. The Marines have spent years gathering fingerprint and DNA evidence from IEDs and tried to match that against a database of similar information collected from villagers. By the time the analysis results came back, the bombers would be long gone. Now field operatives are uploading the samples from villagers into Palantir and turning up matches from past attacks on the spot, says Samuel Reading, a former Marine who works in Afghanistan for NEK Advanced Securities Group, a U.S. military contractor. "It's the combination of every analytical tool you could ever dream of," Reading says. "You will know every single bad guy in your area."
Palantir has found takers for its data mining system closer to home, too. Wall Street has been particularly receptive. Every year, the company holds a conference to promote its technology, and the headcount swelled from about 50 people at past events to 1,000 at the most recent event in October. "I saw bankers there that don't go to any other conferences," says Gartner's Litan. The banks have set Palantir's technology loose on their transaction databases, looking for fraudsters, trading insights, and even new ways to price mortgages. Guy Chiarello, chief information officer for JPMorgan Chase (JPM), says Palantir's technology turns "data landfills into gold mines." The bank has a Palantir system for fraud detection and plans to use the technology to better tailor marketing campaigns to consumers. "Google (GOOG) unlocked the Internet with its search engine," Chiarello says. "I think Palantir is on the way to doing a similar thing inside the walls of corporate data."
One of the world's largest banks has used Palantir software to break up a popular scam called BustOut. Criminals will steal or purchase access to thousands of people's online identities, break into their bank and credit-card accounts, then spend weeks watching. Once they spot a potential victim purchasing a plane ticket or heading out on a holiday, they siphon money out of the accounts as fast as they can while the mark is in transit. The criminals hide their trails by anonymizing their computing activity and disabling alert systems in the bank and credit-card accounts. When the bank picks up on a few compromised accounts, it uses Palantir to uncover the network of thousands of other accounts that have to be tapped.
A Palantir deal can run between $5 million and $100 million. The company asks for 20 percent of that money up front and the rest only if the customer is satisfied at the end of the project. Typically, it's competing against the likes of Raytheon (RTN), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOC), andIBM (IBM), along with a scattering of less prominent data mining startups. "We can be up and running in a bank in eight weeks," Karp says. "You will be getting results right away instead of waiting two to three years with our competitors."

Palantir has been doubling headcount every year to keep up with business. To get a job at the company, an applicant must pass a gauntlet of brain teasers. An example: You have 25 horses and can race them in heats of 5. You know the order the horses finished in, but not their times. How many heats are necessary to find the fastest? First and second? First, second, and third? (Answers: six, seven, and seven.) If candidates are able to prove themselves as what Karp calls "a software artist," they're hired. The company gives new arrivals some reading material, including a guide to improvisational acting, a lecture by the entrepreneur Steve Blank on Silicon Valley's secret history with the military, and the book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. They're also rewarded with a low wage by Silicon Valley standards: Palantir caps salaries at $127,000.
Instead of traditional salespeople, Palantir has what it calls forward deployed engineers. These are the sometimes awkward computer scientists most companies avoid putting in front of customers. Karp figures that engineers will always tell the truth about the pros and cons of a product, know how to solve problems, and build up a strong reputation with customers over time. "If your life or your economic future is on the line," he says, "and there is one company where people are maybe kind of suffering from Asperger's syndrome, but they have always been accurate, you end up trusting them."
The director of these forward deployed engineers is Shyam Sankar, a Palantir veteran. In his corner office there's a Shamu stuffed animal, an antique Afghan rifle hanging overhead, and a 150-year-old bed frame decorated with a wild, multicolored comforter. The bed comes in handy during an annual team-building exercise: For one week, employees live in the Palantir offices; the bedless make shantytown houses out of cardboard boxes. Sankar celebrates Palantir's mix of office frivolity and low salaries. "We will feed you, clothe you, let you have slumber parties, and nourish your soul," he says. "But this is not a place to come to get cash compensation."
Like many of the young engineers, Sankar recounts a personal tale that explains his patriotic zeal. When he was young, his parents moved from India to Nigeria, where Sankar's father ran a pharmaceutical plant. One night, burglars broke into their home, pistol-whipped his dad, and stole some valuables. After that traumatic event, the family moved to Florida and started over, selling T-shirts to theme parks. "To come to a place and not have to worry about such bad things instilled a sense of being grateful to America," Sankar says. "I know it sounds corny, but the idea here is to save the Shire."
Karp acknowledges that to outsiders, Palantir's Middle-earth-meets-National Security Agency culture can seem a bit much. "One of my investors asked me, Is this a company or a cult?' " he says. "Well, I don't seem to be living like a cult leader." Then he begins a discourse on how Palantir's unusual ways serve the business. "I tend to think the critiques are true," Karp says. "To make something work, it cannot be about the money. I would like to believe we have built a culture that is about a higher purpose that takes the form of a company. I think the deep character anomalies of the company are the reasons why the numbers are so strong."

Using Palantir technology, the FBI can now instantly compile thorough dossiers on U.S. citizens, tying together surveillance video outside a drugstore with credit-card transactions, cell-phone call records, e-mails, airplane travel records, and Web search information. Christopher Soghoian, a graduate fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, worries that Palantir will make these agencies ever hungrier consumers of every piece of personal data. "I don't think Palantir the firm is evil," he says. "I think their clients could be using it for evil things."
Soghoian points out that Palantir's senior legal adviser, Bryan Cunningham, authored an amicus brief three years ago supporting the Bush Administration's position in the infamous warrantless wiretapping case and defended its monitoring domestic communication without search warrants. Another event that got critics exercised: A Palantir engineer, exposed by the hacker collective Anonymous earlier this year for participating in a plot to break into the PCs of WikiLeaks supporters, was quietly rehired by the company after being placed on leave.
Karp stresses that Palantir has developed some of the most sophisticated privacy protection technology on the market. Its software creates audit trails, detailing who has seen certain pieces of information and what they've done with it. Palantir also has a permission system to make sure that workers in agencies using its software can access only the data that their clearance levels allow. "In the pre-Palantir days, analysts could go into file cabinets and read whatever they want," says former NCTC director Leiter. "Nobody had any idea what they had seen." Soghoian scoffs at the privacy-protecting features Palantir builds into its software. "If you don't think the NSA can disable the piece of auditing functionality, you have to be kidding me," he says. "They can do whatever they want, so it's ridiculous to assume that this audit trail is sufficient."
Thiel, who sits on the board and is an avowed libertarian, says civil liberties advocates should welcome Palantir. "We cannot afford to have another 9/11 event in the U.S. or anything bigger than that," he says. "That day opened the doors to all sorts of crazy abuses and draconian policies." In his view, the best way to avoid such scenarios in the future would be to provide the government the most cutting-edge technology possible and build in policing systems to make sure investigators use it lawfully.
After Washington and Wall Street, Karp says the company may turn its attention to health care, retail, insurance, and biotech. The thinking is that Palantir's technology can illuminate health insurance scams just as well as it might be able to trace the origin of a virus outbreak. Despite all this opportunity, and revenue that is tripling every year, Karp insists that Palantir will remain grounded. An IPO, while not out of the question, "dilutes nonmonetary motivation," he says.
One higher purpose in the coming year will be rescuing strapped companies and government bodies from the brink of financial ruin. Karp lists fraud, Internet security issues, Europe's financial woes, and privacy concerns as possible drivers for Palantir's business. For anyone in peril, the message is clear: Give us a signal and a forward deployed engineer will be at your doorstep. "There are some people out there that don't think to pick up the phone and call us," Karp says. "By next year, many of those people will."
Vance is a technology writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. Stone is a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek.

[Magda Hassan]

PRESS RELEASE
Feb. 27, 2012, 8:36 p.m. EST

ManTech Enhances Cyber Security Solutions with Acquisition of Business of HBGary

Acquisition expands cyber security solutions offering to commercial market

FAIRFAX, Va., Feb 27, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- ManTech International Corporation MANT +0.11% has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the business of HBGary, Inc. of Sacramento, Ca. The transaction, structured as an asset purchase and subject to certain closing conditions, is expected to be completed in March.
HBGary provides a comprehensive suite of software products to detect, analyze, and diagnose Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) and targeted malware. The company has an impressive list of commercial customers in the financial services, energy, critical infrastructure and technology sectors. The business will be an integral part of ManTech's broad cyber security offering.
"This acquisition enhances our capabilities in the growing cyber security market," said L. William Varner, president and chief operating officer of ManTech's Mission, Cyber and Technology Solutions group. "Our recent hire of Ken Silva, who will lead this new business unit, was instrumental in enabling ManTech to further develop its cyber security strategy. The HBGary leadership team are recognized thought leaders in this market. The combination of ManTech and HBGary will create a broader cyber security solution capability for both our commercial and government customers."
"ManTech will give HBGary significant and positive growth, expanding our opportunities," said HBGary CEO Greg Hoglund. "HBGary's commercial customers will benefit from the addition of ManTech's world-class incident response services, and ManTech's government business will be bolstered with a cutting edge set of products to protect mission-critical IT assets."
"We're taking steps to expand in new growth markets, just as we have always done," said ManTech Chairman and CEO George J. Pedersen. "ManTech has a history of taking the skills we have gained in our core business and applying it to new customers and new missions. We look forward to adding HBGary into the ManTech family as we apply our combined cyber capabilities to important commercial customers."
About ManTech International Corporation: ManTech is a leading provider of innovative technologies and solutions for mission-critical national security programs for the intelligence community; the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Energy and Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the space community; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and other U.S. federal government customers. We provide support to critical national security programs through 1,000 current contracts. ManTech's expertise includes command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) lifecycle support, cyber security, global logistics support, intelligence/counter-intelligence support, information technology modernization and sustainment, systems engineering, and test and evaluation. ManTech supports major national missions, such as military readiness, terrorist threat detection, information security and border protection. Additional information on ManTech can be found at http://www.mantech.com .
Forward-Looking Information
Statements and assumptions made in this press release, which do not address historical facts, constitute "forward-looking" statements that ManTech believes to be within the definition in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of our control. Words such as "may," "will," "expect", "intend," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," or "continue," or the negative of these terms or words of similar import are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
These forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results and outcomes may differ materially from the results and outcomes we anticipate. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results we anticipate, include, but are not limited to, the following: failure to successfully integrate recently acquired companies or businesses into our operations or to realize any accretive or synergistic effects from such acquisitions; failure to identify, execute or effectively integrate future acquisitions; adverse changes in U.S. government spending priorities; failure to retain existing U.S. government contracts, win new contracts or win recompetes; adverse changes in future levels of expenditures for programs we support caused by budgetary pressures facing the federal government and changing mission priorities; failure to obtain option awards, task orders or funding under contracts; failure to maintain strong relationships with other contractors; adverse changes in our mix of contract types; adverse results of U.S. government audits of our government contracts; risk of contract performance, modification or termination; and risks associated with complex U.S. government procurement laws and regulations; and competition. These and other risk factors are more fully discussed in the section entitled "Risks Factors" in ManTech's Annual Report on Form 10-K previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Feb. 24, 2012, Item 1A of Part II of our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and, from time to time, in ManTech's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The forward-looking statements included herein are only made as of the date of this press release, and ManTech undertakes no obligation to publicly update any of the forward-looking statements made herein, whether as a result of new information, subsequent events or circumstances, changes in expectations or otherwise.
SOURCE: ManTech International Corporation

ManTech International Corporation Lauren Kushin, 703-218-6406 Lauren.kushin@mantech.com ManTech-F

[Magda Hassan]

Media articles are at the bottom of this pad

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Odious corporate spying firms enjoy epic bad publicity day

What's outlined in these sets of proposals, as Glenn points out, "quite possibly constitutes serious crimes." And as it relates to Glenn and the others, it constitutes an unconscionable attempt to silence journalists doing their jobs.

One nice point about the criminality is that (at least in my jurisdiction) the confidential information regimes are an outspring of the law of equity, and one of the core equitable maxims is those who come to equity must do so with clean hands (ie, the law won't recognise your rights where they protect unconscionable conduct)

Aaron Barr vs Barret Brown Phone Conference
http://www.mediafire.com/file/7vb98xu7co...wnLULZ.wma

Internal Email lulz:
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/7462/hbgary.jpg
http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/5227/...809030.jpg
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/2475/pwntweet.jpg

Aaron VS WinMark Emails:
http://pastebin.com/h0uBZWUK
http://pastebin.com/ZzcvLmS9
http://pastebin.com/WUZHzMDW

Aaron> Anonymous group and comments on Goverment talks
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=16793

From Greg - Jamie is a fuck-tard
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=25761

Bank of the West / Botnet
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=9472

Citibank have been using falsified documents!!!
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=27331
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=19411

It appears penny was in the know about Aaron's bullshit all along
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=16774

Interesting resume of former U.S. military intel officer who applied for gig with HBGary
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=35748

Direct deposit information for their bank account. Routing and account number
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=43852

Can debatably be construed as the advocation of illegal activities
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=37523

HBGary Patent Info (with doc)
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=34582

Paystub
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=30571 Pull the paystub out, I bet its got his SSN on it

Internal company conflict
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=31296

Arguments between Aaron and his wife
http://www.lacy.ie/hbgary.php?to=&from=&...mit=Search

Here's Greg when he's mad
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=35748

"Penny Leavy-Hoglund" <3 Greg
http://pastebin.com/4rM26cwT

Visited the Pentagon in January
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=19475

Ted H. Vera >President | COO >HBGary Federal >719-237-8623 http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=37018

76-thousand+ cracked username/password combinations in a table called MEMBERS
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=30118

Aaron>Sooooo...using the google hack string
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=6732

Checklist for New Facility Security Clearances
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=10709

Aaron>Ted: pointabout.com. I am partnering with them to go after some work and develop some capabilities. Specifically look at their tech appmakr.com.
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=36834

Social Media Data Collection and Persona Development
http://pastebin.com/n7ZW78WC

Provisional Industrial Security Approval Sponsorship Program - NSA/CSS
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=19475

Nmap host scan
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=30380

There were emails about the NSA PISA [http://www.nsa.gov/business/programs/pisa.shtml program, and getting free certification through Aaron's connections

Others that maybe of interest:
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=20319
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=16501
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=3622
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=11816
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=2860
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=19359
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=21680
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=13183
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=20280
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=31290
http://search.hbgary.anonleaks.ru/index.php?id=21462


I think these guys are going to get arrested, it would be interesting
to leave the soft impression that Aaron is the one that got them, and
that without Aaron the Feds would have never been able to get out of
their own way. So, position Aaron as a hero to the public. At this
point they are going to get arrested anyway. But, Aaron has some
concerns on how that might affect commerical business (although I'm
not clear on why yet)
---

Dated 1/18/2011
Greetings Aaron,

Congratulations - your talk "Who Needs NSA when we have Social Media?" has
been selected for the B-Sides San Francisco event. Please take a few
minutes to fill out the speaker questionnaire located here:https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform...b1pJY1E6MQ

I will also send an invite to the form separately in case you have any
problems.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Amber Wolf
Event Organizer
Security B-Sides
415.405.5250
@securitybsides


I wanted to give u some information and see if you thought any of your customers might have some interest in the data.
I am not sure if you have been following. There is a group called Anonymous, that started supporting Wikileaks by attacking cyber targets, such as Mastercard and VIsa. I am doing research for a talk I am giving in San Francisco next month. The focus of my research is this group, identifying key players, organizational structure. I am doing a pretty good job identifying key people and illuminating how they work. All of this I am doing using social
If you think any of your customers might be interested let me know.
Aaron

---


HBGary Federal Flexes Private Intelligence Muscle.

HBGary Federal, the specialized and classified services arm of HBGary,
flexes its muscle today by revealing the identities of all the top
management within the group Anonymous, the group behind the DDOS
attacks associated with Wikileaks. HBGary Federal constructed and
maintained multiple digital identities and penetrated the upper
management of Anonymous, and was subsequently able to learn actual
identities of the primary management team BUILDING A COMPLETE ORG
CHART. This information was critical for law enforcement, yet all the
intelligence work was done without law enforcement or government
involvement. Only after achieving the mission did Aaron Barr, the CEO
of HBGary Federal, reveal this information to the Feds. This
underscores the need for new blood in the intelligence community and
the abilities of small agile teams that are unhindered by the
bureaucratic machine.
what do you think? too negative on intel community?
-G

---

From: Greg Hoglund greg@hbgary.com
To: Aaron Barr aaron@hbgary.com

HBGAry Federal Pwns Anonymous
---
This is a proud day. HBGAry Federal, lead by Aaron Barr, has made ppublic their long term penetration of the anonymous groupp, the DDOS group associated with Wikileaks.
They were able to penetrate the group to the highest levell, gaining the trust of the inner circle.

The HBGary Federal team was able to learn the identities of all the key key pplayers - appproximately 10 people. Now these individuals are being arrested by the FBI. Aaron and his team were also able to learn the identities of approx. 30 liutenants. The Feds are finally taking down Anonymous, but, it should be noted that HBGary Federal perfromed this entire operation without law enforcement or government invollvement.

---

So how I would pitch an increased price
1. First HBGary and the other investors will not be participating in the
earn out and we've invested in giving you services work to jump start and
give references.
2. HBGary would have hired three developers to complete the work and we'd
still have that investment
3. HBGary is being courted by large software vendors and they would be
interested in HBGary Federal for the pipeline of business. Since HBGary is
an investor, we'd need to recoup costs we've put out that are around $82K
plus a good return.

-Penny

---

Aaron Barr to Mark

But dude whos evil?

US Gov? Wikileaks? Anonymous?

Its all about power. The Wikileaks and Anonymous guys think they are doing the people justice by without much investigation or education exposing information or targeting organizations? BS. Its about trying to take power from others and give it to themeselves.

I follow one law.

Mine.


from Mark:
Our entire government was set up on the idea of "trying to take power from others and give it to themselves" The founders stated it implicitly. The idea was for the states to fight the federal gov and to fight amongst themselves so nothing would every be accomplished except for when it absolutely needed to be. That's why the government is told what it can do not what it can not. Anything not stated is suppose to be out of the governments hands. Where any law to a citizen is suppose to be what you can't do so that you can do whatever you want without infringing apon the freedoms and liberties of other citizens. A non transparent government does nothing but keep the citizens uninformed and unable to make an educated vote. Your one law statement makes it sound like you believe you know what's best. That's a slippery slope.


Jefferson was an idealist that lived in a very different time.
And he had slaves...
- Aaron's response

---

Yeah, how did that work out the first time. You wanted Dan to be your engineer not me. Want me to check that facebook page "I listened to Aaron Barr and now I'm under investigation". Yeah, your gut feelings are awesome! Plus, scientifically proven that gut feelings are wrong by real scientist types. - Mark
(Do we want awesome Mark quotes or just Aaron idiot quotes?) go to town on it
the more the better imo

---

I'm not doubting that you're doing analysis. I'm doubting that statistically that analysis has any mathematical weight to back it. I put it at less than .1% chance that it's right. You're still working off of the idea that the data is accurate. - Mark

---

I made some significant progress last night on my understanding of the group. I feel I have nearly every one of the leadership, administrators and operators identified to a real person.

First a clarification.
Q - Founder and runs the IRC. He is indead in California, as are many of the senior leadership of the group.
Owen - Almost a co-founder, lives in NY with family that are also active in the group, including slenaid and rabbit (nicks).
Most of the people in the IRC channel are zombies to inflate the numbers. At any given time there are probably no more than 20-40 people active, accept during hightened points of activity like Egypt and Tunisia where the numbers swell but mostly by trolls.

Now for a description of roles. The administrators run the show. The operators are there to answer questions, manage tasks, such as the mass faxing and sms spamming efforts during OpEgypt. They also manage the bots. I believe most of their DDOS capability comes from a small subset of people like CommanderX that manage some significant firepower.
Most of the operational leadership with US based with some measurable support from some of their old 4chan friends in UK, France, Germany, Netherlands. I have these people identified as well.
The communications outgrowth in FB and twitter is a different structure. The leadership of operations and those that manage the communications talk and share information but act autonomously. Operation Egypt FB page was a significant conduit of information during the operation and has more people that follow that page than any of the official Anonops pages on FB.
Any other questions let me know.
Aaron

---

Hmm. Don't know what impact will be there.
Story should go online in a few hours.
Focus is on Anonymous structure, handles of leaders, inroads by law enforcement, and your work.
As long as I leave my specific irc amd FB alias out of the conversation I should be ok.
Aaron

---

The conversation was very interesting today. The admit they had no idea this was happening until it hit the streets. They have no idea how to manage things like this in the future. And the agree they are not capable of doing the right activities (like I did) to be better prepared in the future because of authority and policy restrictions.
So I gave them a model that might work. I will do the work based on my understanding of need on my dime... put together a report... and sell them the report.
They liked that. I am working up 5 slides to hopefully brief Glenn next Friday.
Aaron

---

karen, aaron,
60 minutes wants to do a segment with Aaron about penetrating anonymous.
- Greg

You are the dark star. Oh, I'm afraid the deflector shield will be
quite operational when your friends arrive....
jesus say it aint so
- Greg


---

Any group of people with a common goal is reckless. No one knows the effects of an attack or it's outcome. May I point your direction to the Middle East since it was Persia and Mesopotamia.
I don't believe the ACLU or PETA or Greenpeace are always focused and cosiderate groups, but occasionally the do raise some good points.
I enjoy the LULZ
- Mark

---

When these groups speak of free information, including the open source groups, they mean governments and organizations, people have a right to privacy, governements, organizations, and corporations are not people. The supreme court can keep trying to say they are so that corps can give money to politicians but they are not people. They can not be harmed in the same manners. Their freedom to exist can not be taken away in the same way.
That's what they mean they just suck at saying it.
- Mark

This group has some good points but is acting very recklessly I think. So if I can help to be a small balance, and get some press and customers in the process...yeah! - Aaron, in response.

---

Governments and corporations should have a right to protect secrets, senstive information that could be damage to their operations. I think these groups are also saying this should be free game as well and I disagree. Hence the 250,000 cables. WHich was bullshit. - Aaron

---

With wikileaks and anonymous they corrupted faster. O believed in what wikileaks did when they released the helicopter video. I now believe they are a menace. Anonymous employees. - Aaronfag

---

When u figure out how to scrape the people who have liked a particular page or group then tackle this one.
I would like to be able to scrape all the people who have clicked like on a comment or posted a comment to a post.
For example.
Take the Anonops facebook page.
I would like a ranking list of the active participants on this page in ranking order of likes and comments. I would like to collect those comments and post them under the actual UID that posted them.
So then we could go to one page for a person in our system. See what their friends tell about them and what they post and like that tells about them.
Am I stretching the boundaries of possibility yet?
Aaron

---

I have thought about going to a particular organization, government agency. Here is my one concern. I am still somewhat of an unknown in the social space, a space that I see as increasingly important. I am afraid that if I go to one organization the information will be walled and I will continue to be an unknown and have to claw my way to noteriety. I know that seems incredibly self-serving, but I am a small business. I have the opportunity to ga
- Aaron

---

I wanted to inform you of my research and content for the talk at Bsides. I have focused some of my research and talk around the anonymous group, a supposed loose collection of freedom of speech enthusiasts, anarchists, etc. They used to target the RIAA with DDOS attacks now they have taken up the cause of wikileaks, tunisia, venezuela, algeria, etc. They have received a decent amount of press about this.
I am enumerating their communications infrastructure and plan to brief this as well as outing many of the major players within the group. This will likely make HBGary Federal, and likely HBGary a target.
I have developed a persona that is well accepted within their groups and want to use this and my real persona against eachother to build up press for the talk. Pre-talk plan.
I am going to tell a few key leaders under my persona, that I have been given information that a so called cyber security expert named Aaron Barr will be briefing the power of social media analysis and as part of the talk with be dissecting the Anonymous group as well as some critical infrastructure and government organizations
I will prepare a press sheet for Karen to give to Darkreading a few days after I tell these folks under persona to legitimize the accusation. This will generate a big discussion in Anonymous chat channels, which are attended by the press. This will then generate press about the talk, hopefully driving more people and more business to us.

But it will also make us a target.
Thoughts?
Aaron

reply: Well,
I don't really want to get DDOS'd, so assuming we do get DDOS'd then
what? How do we make lemonade from that?
- Greg

---

Way cool on anonymous
I am actually a bit nervous.
I am going to make a lot of people angry. Including some US govies that probably would have wished I had brought the matieral to them first.
Aaron

---

One thing of note. I know there are a few task forces looking at this in gov. What I can do is tie irc alias all the way to real person and have defined the communication and operations infrastructure of the organization. Of there are gaps in this data in government I can help and probably should before my talk when they will likely tighten things down a bit.
They may have it covered but they may not.
Aaron

---

Thank you Tom.
As to the title. I thought about it hard. Unfortunately these conference like some sensationalism. I have tried the nuts and bolts submission and been declined. And being one that likes to take some risks chose a title that would generate more interest. During the talk I will discuss how the resources required to conduct intelligence work have lessened.
Aaron

---

"They are completely pwnd. our sales rep in dc, one of the founders of HBGary, called to reassure us that none of our data or any federal agency or SI"s data has been compromised. Only their email, financials and source code. Source Code! i said, and he said it was no big deal, i am seeing the same info on the blogs and in comments on some of the articles i have been reading. pretty bad stuff, because if they have their source code, then they can develop countermeasures for their products. We are ripping out ur hbgary products until everything can be verified, thankfully we only have three small licenses."

- ???

---

Got to be honest. This response made me angry. This thing has drug out and drug out. I am in the middle of a very big event for us that will keep me very busy until the 14th. No one can expect me to drop what is likely one of the biggest events we will have this year for a "possible". I expect some flexibility given the contribution I have made thus far.
- Aaron

---

We should post this on the front page, throw out some tweets "HBGary Federal sets a new bar as private intelligence agency". The pun on bar is intentional.

-G

---
...
December 13, 2010
Blogtopic/media pitch ideas:
· The Hackers Are Coming, The Hackers Are Coming!: Today there is a flurry of breaking news stories about hacks i.e. Gawker, McDonald's, etc. Don't spread FUD, but underscore why companies need to be prepared -> the Importance of Incident Response
· Critical Infrastructure Protection in 2011 and Beyond: What should "critical infrastructure" organizations -- and security vendors need to be thinking about in the new year
...

---

Also, cocks.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IN THE MEDIA:

EXOSED: Attacks on Wikileaks (RT Interview): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExL4KQ3noOI

HBGary Anonymous investigation News Article
http://pastebin.com/UsLaLbvE

Hackers Reveal Offers to Spy on Corporate Rivals
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/pol....html?_r=2

Anonymous' Target Planned to "Take Down" WikiLeaks
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/r...aks?page=1

Palantir Tries to Preserve Their Government Contracts
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/0...contracts/

Berico Technologies severs ties with HBGary
http://www.bericotechnologies.com/press/
Press statement from Berico: http://bericotech.com/press/

Palantir Apologizes for Wikileaks Attack Proposal, Cuts Ties with HBGary
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/20...th-hbgary/
Press statement from Palantir: http://palantirtech.com/statement-from-dr-alex-karp

HBGary Fees: "Dam It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta"
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/0...a-gangsta/

Hacked Documents Show Chamber Engaged HBGary to Spy on Unions
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/0...en-hacked/

Anonymous Claims Possession Of Insidious Stuxnet Virus
http://blogs.forbes.com/chrisbarth/2011/...net-virus/

[Magda Hassan]

Palantir just raised a massive $196M, filing shows

Palantir
Palantir investor Peter Thiel speaking to a roomful of interns at the San Francisco Exploratorium.


September 27, 2013 2:03 PM
Christina Farr

2 Comments

Shadowy data-mining startup Palantir closed over $196 million in funding,according to an SEC filing.
The startup is notoriously press-shy, as it mines highly sensitive data for pharmaceutical companies and government agencies. The San Jose Mercury News reported that the company would raise a huge chunk of funding, but it was not clear on the specifics.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Palantir boasts an unrivaled engineering and data science team. It handles messy swamps of data and turns it into data visualizations and maps. The company has built up a reputation in Silicon Valley for recruiting some of the most talented engineers from nearby Stanford University.
The rumored value of Palantir is at over $8 billion, and its chief executive, Alex Karp, told Forbes that it's likely to close $1 billion in contracts next year.
Its seed investor is Peter Thiel, who is an early investor in Facebook and a cofounder of PayPal. The company was founded by Karp, Joe Lonsdale (also cofounder of fin-tech startup Addepar), Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings.
It also counts the CIA's venture arm, In-Q-Tel, among its early investors.
Palantir was recently named by the Telegraph as the "creepiest startup ever," as it counts the U.S. Army and an array of intelligence agencies among its customers. It doesn't hurt that the company was rumored to play a hand in the black ops initiative to kill Osama Bin Laden.
Palantir is one of Silicon Valley's most well-funded startups. The company has raised over $500 million to date from venture firms like Founders Fund as well as private individuals like Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and former Square CTO Keith Rabois.
http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/27/palantir-just-raised-a-massive-196m-filing-shows