Narus (company)

Narus Inc.

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Software
Founded	1997 - 2014
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, California, United States
Number of locations	United States, India
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.
Website	http://www.narus.com/

Narus Inc. was a software company and vendor of big data analytics for cybersecurity.

History

In 1997, Ori Cohen, Vice President of Business and Technology Development for VDONet, founded Narus with Stas Khirman in Israel.^[1] Presently, they are employed with Deutsche Telekom AG and are not members of Narus' Executive Team.^[2][3][4] In 2010, Narus became a subsidiary of Boeing, located in Sunnyvale, California.^[5][6] In 2014, Narus was sold to Symantec.^[7]

Management

In 2004, Narus employed former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, William Crowell as a director. From the Press Release announcing this:^[8]

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.

Investors

Narus has venture funding from companies including JP Morgan Partners, Mayfield, NeoCarta, Presidio Venture Partners, Walden International, Intel, NTT Software and Sumisho Electronics.

Narus had several business partners providing technologies similar to NarusInsight. Several of the partners were funded by In-Q-Tel.From 2007-2010 the "Gesellschaft für technische Sonderlösungen (GTS)"

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.^[9][10]

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.^[11]

System specification and capabilities

Some features of NarusInsight include:^[12]

• Scalability to support surveillance of large, complex IP networks (such as the Internet).
• High-speed packet processing performance, which enables it to sift through the vast quantities of information that travel over the Internet.
• Normalization, Correlation, Aggregation and Analysis provide a model of user, element, protocol, application and network behaviors, in real-time. That is it can track individual users, monitor which applications they are using (e.g., web browsers, instant messaging applications, e-mail) and what they are doing with those applications (e.g., which web sites they have visited, what they have written in their emails/IM conversations), and see how users' activities are connected to each other (e.g., compiling lists of people who visit a certain type of web site or use certain words or phrases in their e-mail messages.
• High reliability from data collection to data processing and analysis.
• NarusInsight's functionality can be configured to feed a particular activity or IP service such as security lawful intercept or even Skype detection and blocking.
• Compliance with CALEA and ETSI.
• Certified by Telecommunication Engineering Center (TEC) in India for lawful intercept and monitoring systems for ISPs.

The intercepted data flows into NarusInsight Intercept Suite.^[13] 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".^[14] 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.

Controversies

AT&T wiretapping room

Narus supplied the software and hardware used at AT&T wiretapping rooms, according to whistleblowers Thomas Drake,^[15] and Mark Klein.^[16]

See also

• Carnivore (software)
• Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act
• Computer surveillance
• ECHELON
• Hepting vs. AT&T, the 2006 lawsuit in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges AT&T allowed the NSA to tap the entirety of its clients' Internet and voice over IP communications using Narus equipment.
• Lincoln (surveillance)
• Room 641A
• SIGINT
• Total Information Awareness
• Verint Systems

References

External links

• Official website
• Wired News article
• Wired News article (AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein discusses Narus STA 6400)
• Documents, including pictures, wiring diagrams, and equipment lists and installation dates, from Mark Klein at the Wayback Machine (archived December 1, 2007)
• Frontline Flash Video "Spying on the Home Front" TV documentary originally aired on PBS 15 May 2007 with a section entitled "The NSA's Eavesdropping at AT&T" with the story of Mark Klein exposing NSA wiretapping with a secure room and Narus STA 6400 at an AT&T facility in San Francisco, CA