Internet Security Firm Lands $6M in New Financing

ATLANTA — Damballa, a provider of Internet security software that targets so-called “bot armies,” has landed $6 million in Series B funding.

Noro-Moseley Partners, which is based in Atlanta, is one of the firm’s investors.

The deal was first reported by Private Equity Wire, which cited a regulatory filing.

Damballa raised a $2.5 million Series A round last year.

The company works with enterprise networks and Internet Service Providers to deliver what it calls “listening posts” on the Internet. These are designed to watch for bot armies, or computers that have been hacked and turned into zombies. The zombies seize control of insecure computers and use them to commit fraud.

Zombies also use controlled PCs for such uses as delivering spam, generating denial of service attacks, and authentication theft.

Merrick Furst, associate dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, founded the company.

Before teaching at Tech, Furst was a professor at the University of California Berkeley. He also was chief executive officer of Essential Surfing Gear, a company that was sold in 2000. Furst also was at one time associate dean in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science.

Furst is recognized as an international leader in algorithms, complexity theory and artificial intelligence.