Hacking for good
Hacking is often done with malicious intent. But the two MIT alumni who co-founded fast-growing startup Tinfoil Security have shown that hacking can be put to good use: improving security. Through Tinfoil, Michael Borohovski ’09 and Ainsley Braun ’10 have commercialized scanning software that uses hacking tricks to find vulnerabilities in websites and alert developers and engineers who can quickly fix problems before sites go live. Thousands of startups and small businesses, as well as several large enterprises, are now using the software. And around 75 percent of websites scanned have some form of vulnerability, Braun says. Indeed, a ticker on Tinfoil’s website shows that the software has caught more than 450,000 vulnerabilities so far. “Our No. 1 goal is making sure we’re securing the Internet,” says Braun, Tinfoil’s CEO and a graduate of MIT’s brain and cognitive sciences program. While at MIT, Braun and Borohovski ran with a group of computer-savvy students...