Grisoft, known for its free antivirus software AVG, has acquired Web threat protection company, Exploit Prevention Labs, for an undisclosed sum.
The acquisition was aimed at developing capabilities to defend Grisoft customers against Web threats, which have become the most popular method of infecting computers to steal information or develop botnets.
The acquisition provides Grisoft with the LinkScanner products, which were developed by Exploit Prevention Labs to protect against drive-by-downloaded exploits including iFrame code injections and others affecting applications such as Quicktime.
Grisoft claims that by integrating LinkScanner, AVG eclipses products such as McAfee's SiteAdvisor on the basis that SiteAdviser lacks the ability to provide real-time threat analysis when users click on a link.
"A site that is exploit-free one day can be hacked the next -- a hacked site's status can even change as frequently as hour to hour," said Grisoft in a statement.
The decision to acquire Exploit Prevention Labs comes just weeks after Grisoft's global security strategist, Larry Bidwell, admitted that despite the popularity of Grisoft's free AVG antivirus software -- which has 60 million users worldwide -- it struggles to convert more than two percent to its premium, paid-for antivirus products.
Grisoft is expected to unveil a product roadmap for LinkScanner integrations in the first quarter of 2008.
