Twitter buys anti-malware firm

Twitter has made another stake in the security space with the acquisition of anti-malware company  Dasient.

The  "web anti-malware" provider in  2009 launched an online platform to search for malicious content in websites and hidden in advertising.

"In 2010, Dasient launched the industry’s first anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from the scourge of malicious ads," the company said in a post. "Over the last year, we have been very active in securing the ads and content of the some of the industry’s largest ad networks and web sites."

Dasient was founded by former Google engineers Neil Daswani and Shariq Rizvi, and former McKinsey strategy consultant Ameet Ranadive.

Daswani was senior security engineer and product manager at Google before becoming CTO of Dasient, while Rizvi was a software engineer at Google before becoming vice-president of engineering at Dasient.

“By joining Twitter, Dasient will be able to apply its technology and team to the world's largest real-time information network. As part of this merger, Dasient is winding down its business and is no longer able to accept new customers.”

It was Twitter's second acqusition in the infosec space in  as many months. On 28 November the microblogging site purchased cryptography startup which designed security and management solutions for  mobile devices.

Whisper Systems founder Moxie Marlinspike could not at the time comment about future security projects with Twitter.

-With Darren Pauli