xorlab: The hackers' hard life

Antontio Barresi has already been working for many years in the IT sector and was already dealing with computer security as a teenager. He realized very early that the protection from cyber-attacks had to be increased. “The problem is more topical than ever”, he says. And how do you want to solve the problem? “We detect files which exploit unknown weak points of the software”, says Barresi. “Let’s look at the classic example: The user receives an email with a file attached. This could contain a harmful attachment. Our software scans the file and detects whether it’s malicious or not.” In the end, the product is a hardware appliance that can be integrated in clients’ network. “With our software, the data get scanned in this appliance”, says Barresi.

Client-side attacks, spear phishing, watering hole, drive-by infections: A sample of the attacks fought by xorlab
Even though this might not be a new business model the potential is far from being exploited: “Our product doesn’t look for malicious behaviors or patterns in the files. There are conventional solutions that do exactly this. Those are easy to bypass.” The attacker can adapt the behavior or the file in a way that it is not recognized by the detection pattern. “In our case this is impossible to the attacker”, he says. “Besides files like PDFs, Word, Excel documents etc., we also scan websites and check whether or not they try to attack a user.” xorlab is protecting against so-called client-side attacks, spear phishing, watering hole, drive-by infections. “Those are the attacks that we prevent. This is usually the first step to attack a company whereby those techniques are being used in particular by very sophisticated attackers”, he says.

An important next step thanks to Venture Kick 
Considered on the paper the company is very young because it was founded on the 23^rd of July 2015, but the idea already exists for quite some time. After having developed the idea the startup needed money in order to progress. “A friend believed in the idea and invested in our project”, says Barresi. After that they started participating in workshops and competitions to get a better knowledge about the startup scene. They participated in the business plan competition by venture.ch for example and made it into the top ten.

Barresi says: “We have learnt a lot through this. But not as much as through Venture Kick.” They appreciated two things in particular about the program. First of all the direct feedbacks from the coaches in the Kickers Camps were very instructive. Secondly, there was a certain pressure. “We were forced to dare the next step and be ready for the event. The Venture Kick Jury expects concrete achievements. At the end, you have to put everything in the balance”, says Barresi.

This plan succeeded as xorlab won the first two rounds and CHF 30’000. They are now preparing for the Venture Kick finale where they can win CHF 100’000 more. Barresi is of course hoping to win the last round: “It would clearly be helpful since we already have two pilot clients for the next year. Now it’s just the product that needs to be finished.” A victory at Venture Kick would thus come in handy.