Codenomicon

In 2001, in Oulu, Finland, a trio of researchers—Mikko Varpiola, Ari Takanen, and Rauli Kaksonen—spun a company out of a university project. The company, Codenomicon, was built on a simple premise: proactively find software vulnerabilities before they become a problem. Their method was a technique called fuzz testing, which involves bombarding software with unexpected data to see what breaks. This allowed them to uncover unknown, or 'zero-day', vulnerabilities for their clients. For over a decade, Codenomicon quietly built its business, serving major telecommunications and technology companies. Then, in April 2014, everything changed. While working on their own security tools, a team of their engineers, Riku, Antti, and Matti, discovered a catastrophic flaw in OpenSSL, the encryption software used by a vast portion of the internet. This bug could allow attackers to steal protected information, including passwords and secret keys, from servers. Codenomicon did more than just find the bug; they gave it a name, a logo, and a website: Heartbleed.com. This branding exercise turned an abstract software flaw into a global news event. While a Google security engineer also discovered the bug independently around the same time, it was Codenomicon's branding that captured the world's attention. This discovery became the ultimate proof of their capabilities. Just over a year later, in June 2015, the cybersecurity giant Synopsys announced it was acquiring Codenomicon, integrating the Finnish company's expertise and tools into its own platform.