FireEye
A network-security firm that detonated suspicious code in virtual machines to catch zero-day threats — and in 2020 exposed the SolarWinds attack by being hacked itself.
Founded in 2004 by Ashar Aziz. The idea was to run suspect files and attachments inside isolated virtual machines and watch what they actually did, rather than trust signatures — effective against targeted attacks (APTs) and previously unknown malware. The 2013 purchase of Mandiant gave the company a renowned incident-response arm, the one behind the much-cited APT1 report on Chinese espionage.
When FireEye's own red-team tools were stolen in 2020, it pulled on the threads and uncovered the SolarWinds attack, one of the most far-reaching supply-chain compromises ever. The products business was sold in 2021 and became Trellix; Mandiant was spun off and acquired by Google in 2022.