F5 Networks Acquires NGINX For $670 Million

Mar 12, 2019

One of the most important software companies NGINX, which is
also behind the very popular open-source web server of the same
name, is being acquired by its rival, F5 Networks, in a deal
valued at about $670 million.

While NGINX is not a name that you have ever heard of, the
reality is that you use NGINX every day when you post a photo,
watch streaming video, purchase goods online, or log into your
applications at work.

NGINX powers over half of the busiest websites in the world.
Majority of sites on the Internet today, including The Hacker News,
and hundreds of thousands apps, like Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix,
and Airbnb are hosted on web servers running NGINX.

NGINX web server is the third most widely used servers in the
world—behind only Microsoft and Apache, and ahead of Google. In
short, the internet as we know it today would not exist without
NGINX.

F5 Acquires NGINX to Bridge NetOps and DevOps

F5 Networks is the industry leader in cloud and security
application infrastructure that helps businesses secure and manage
their software and web applications.

F5 and NGINX became rivals when the latter started offering its
paid premium service NGINX Plus to help developers build modern
apps for mega-cloud services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft
Azure and other top cloud computing services.

This is why the acquisition makes sense.

F5 President and CEO François Locoh-Donou said that “F5’s
acquisition of NGINX strengthens our growth trajectory by
accelerating our software and multi-cloud transformation.”

“By bringing F5’s world-class application security and rich
application services portfolio for improving performance,
availability, and management together with NGINX’s leading software
application delivery and API management solutions, unparalleled
credibility and brand recognition in the DevOps community, and
massive open source user base, we bridge the divide between NetOps
and DevOps with consistent application services across an
enterprise’s multi-cloud environment.”

The acquisition will also benefit NGINX, as F5 Networks will also
leverage its global sales force, channel infrastructure, and
partner ecosystem to scale NGINX selling opportunities to the
enterprise.

“I believe F5 will be a great home for the technology, the open
source project and community, and the family that have made NGINX
successful,” NGINX CEO Gus Robertson said in a press release
announcing the acquisition.

“I’m excited to continue this journey by adding the power of
NGINX’s open source innovation to F5’s ADC leadership and
enterprise reach. F5 gains depth with solutions designed for
DevOps, while NGINX gains breadth with access to tens of thousands
of customers and partners.”

^[1]

In a press release published on
Monday, F5 Networks announced its plans to acquire all shares of
NGINX for a total enterprise value of approximately $670 million,
“subject to certain adjustments.”

F5 Networks makes it clear that the NGINX brand will remain, as
will its headquarters in San Francisco, after the acquisition
closes and that NGINX CEO Robertson and founders Igor Sysoev and
Maxim Konovalov will continue to lead NGINX.

Once the acquisition closes, Robertson will join F5’s senior
leadership team and report directly to Locoh-Donou.

The boards of directors of both F5 Networks and NGINX has
approved the acquisition deal, which is expected to close in the
second calendar quarter of 2019.

^[2]

References

^{^}
press release
(www.nginx.com)
^{^}
published
(www.f5.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

F5 Networks Acquires NGINX For $670 Million

F5 Acquires NGINX to Bridge NetOps and DevOps

References

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