A friend of mine, namely Antide "xarkes" Petit, came up with
a pretty good rule of thumb that I think should be elevated into a law,
Antide's Law:
If it's unclear what a cyber-security company is doing, what they're doing
is pretty clear.
For example, take a look at Offensive Con
2025 and
2024 sponsors. Amongst them,
you can find:
- Catalyst Security:
"Catalyst Security is a growing team of highly experienced vulnerability
researchers, working on solving the most challenging problems in support of
our customers."
- SAFA: "Leveraging human and machine
intelligence, SAFA zooms into cyber threat flashpoints, keeping you protected
now and into the future." as well as "SAFA’s progressive approach to
cybersecurity means we’re not content to see clients tread water; we strive
to keep them ahead of cyber threats. Our in-house research, along with the
latest technologies, lets you see what’s coming and proactively adapt."
- Vigilant Labs: "It's a need to know thing."
- Binary Gecko: "Binary Gecko GmbH provides tailor
made cybersecurity solutions and services. Our international team is made up
of world class, highly technical professionals with a proven track record in
the field. We strive to tackle every problem with a holistic and in depth
approach."
- Secfence: "Secfence has been the
pioneer of Information Security in India for almost a decade. We are a
research- based organization and we take pride in innovating and pioneering
many techniques and methodologies in Information Security. Along with our
in-house research teams, we have formed global alliances to bring the latest
and the best technology to our clients."
It's not obvious what services those companies are providing, so it's pretty
obvious what services they're providing: exploits/capabilities.
Of course, it isn't a universal law. For one, it doesn't apply to
megacorporations, as they too tend to have meaningless blurbs on their websites
as well. For example, while "Capgemini
helps businesses imagine their future and make it real with AI, technology and
people." doesn't means much, what they're providing is information technology
consulting and outsourcing, like providing skip tracing
services for enforcement and removal operations for the
ICE.
Also, sometimes, it's simply a company being abysmally bad at marketing.
Note that the contrapositive isn't true, a minority of companies are pretty
open about what they're doing, like
CrowdFense or
Epsilon. And finally, some companies
like Zerodium are so (in)famous that everyone knows
more or less what they're doing.