HD Moore Joins Research-Driven Consulting Firm

Metasploit creator and famed security researcher HD Moore has joined Atredis Partners, a firm that performs penetration tests and research for its clients.

Word of Moore's new position came today via an Atredis Partner's tweet: "We're excited to announce @hdmoore has joined Atredis as our VP, Research and Development. We're taking over the world, one shell at a time."

Moore has kept a relatively low profile in the past year since he left his post as chief research officer at Rapid7, where he had been since 2009. In an interview with Dark Reading today, Moore said in the past year he continued his work on the Metasploit Framework, the open source pen-testing platform, and conducted penetration-testing engagements and assisted startups.

Atredis Partners - which was co-founded by three veteran security researchers formerly from Accuvant's Applied Research Team, Nathan Keltner, Shawn Moyer, and Josh Thomas - conducts penetration testing for its security assessment practice, security assessment for its embedded (think IoT, mobile, and industrial products) practice, and offers risk and advisory services.

Moore says Atredis gets "really interesting gigs," including security assessments of medical devices, drones, and even spacecraft products. "In a lot of cases, we are brought in when no tools exist yet, and so we generally then write our own tools" to assess and pen-test the products in question, Moore says.

Its clients include OEMs and resellers of a product that want to ensure the security of it, he says. Atredis then works directly with the manufacturer to remedy any security issues, for instance.

In addition to his new post at Atredis, Moore will continue his work on Metasploit as well as helping startups get off the ground.

According to Atredis' website, the firm's penetration testing team "takes a targeted, client-centric testing approach that starts with an attacker profile, industry-centric threats, and risk tolerance. We use real attack scenarios and advanced vulnerability research techniques, identifying known attack classes while also finding new zero-day vulnerabilities unique to your environment. Finally, we collaborate with you to develop a realistic mitigation strategy, aligned with your specific requirements."

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