Intertrust divests whiteCyption software protection to Zimperium

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Intertrust Technologies, the inventor of DRM, has divested its whiteCryption software protection technology to Zimperium, a mobile security specialist focused on enterprise solutions.

whiteCryption’s code protection (anti-tampering, shielding from reverse-engineering) and key obfuscation capabilities complement existing runtime threat detection and threat monitoring functionality in Zimperium’s Mobile Application Protection Suite (MAPS); which also offers code scanning tools that help developers prevent security, privacy and compliance errors.

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While mergers and acquisitions often carry an ominous tone, this one wasn’t as earth-shattering as it may seem.  Zimperium and Intertrust had been exploring partnership options to help Zimperium bolster its own offerings and ultimately arrived at this organizational solution, announced on July 21st.   whiteCryption itself has been a joint venture that has long operated as a semi-independent entity, 51% owned by Intertrust and 49% by whiteCryption founders.

“Zimperium and Intertrust have strongly aligned common goals and will collaborate going forward,” said Tom Miller, SVP of Global Sales in an interview with Piracy Monitor.  “Bigger picture, Intertrust will continue to partner strategically to bring best-of-class content protection to bear against customer problems.”

Read Zimperium’s press release (via Zimperium’s site)

Read about whiteCryption (Intertrust site for now)

Why it matters

Intertrust partners in several areas.  The company offers a forensic watermarking solution in collaboration with two third party partners.  Also, while Intertrust offers solutions to protect native consumer end-points such as iOS, Android and streaming set-top box environments, it partners with another third party to offer protection for HTML5 players and Javascript environments.

Some piracy observers believe that software protection is out-of-scope for the piracy problem.  Contrary to this view, others believe that it’s critical to an overall anti-piracy initiative.  In fact, piracy is a far ranging problem with many use-cases and attack surfaces.  In Piracy Monitor’s own taxonomy of piracy, there’s the theft of content, of services, of infrastructure, of software and devices, of advertising, and the “theft of you.”

Without protection, pirate developers can reverse-engineer legitimate software to create fraudulent apps and programs that resemble the real thing, but for nefarious purposes.  These apps can be distributed via direct download or pre-integrated into illicit streaming devices.  Fraudulent apps can help pirates steal legitimate services, content and personal information, and can act as paths to deposit malware or ransomware on the devices of unsuspecting end users.  Intertrust will continue to offer solutions there.

[ Note: While Intertrust is a Sponsor of Piracy Monitor at the time of this article’s publication, this article is an independent view by Piracy Monitor. ]

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