Part of an Afternoon with TrustPipe...

Today an article that sounded interesting was pointed out to me, regarding a company named TrustPipe that is claiming to catch 100% of network attacks. A direct quote from their website:

"Our patented technology understands the DNA 
of the Internet — what’s good and what’s bad.
It can detect virtually every attack — even the 
brand new "zero-day" ones — and protect you."

Naturally I was intrigued by this, although the cost of the tool (five dollars for five years) seemed to be awfully cheap, and I was a little surprised that the two options at the bottom of the screen are "Rest of World" and "Mainland China". 

My location options are "Rest of World" and "Mainland China". That seems a little odd.

When I did a Google search for the company, I came across their Twitter account which, since joining in 2011, as a total of one tweet. That also seems odd, especially for a company that does as much business at the article states.

Since February 2011, the company Twitter account has tweeted one time. Again, that seems odd to me.

At this point I was a little concerned, and I decided to use a very low limit credit card that I seldom use, just in case I had any more bad vibes after making the purchase. I paid the five dollar cost and received an email to download the tool. The instructions seem fairly straight-forward, and I downloaded the tool.

The download instructions after paying five dollars for TrustPipe

I transferred the file to my Malware Box of Evil and I ensured that I had .NET 3.5 installed prior to the installation, just like the instructions stated.

When I tried to install the program, I got an error message 1721 stating that there was a problem with the installation.

Error trying to install TrustPipe

I tried to install the application a few times before giving up. If there is an installation problem I would very much like to be told what the program that is needed would be, rather than a general error. I did a little bit of digging into the program with PEStudio and didn't see anything that jumped out at me as a warning flag, but then again, it is difficult to say without spending some time reverse engineering it, which I am not inclined to do at this point. The bottom line for me is that this product, which is supposed to be lightweight, easy to use, easy to install, etc. will not even install properly on the Malware Box of Evil, which is running Windows XP SP3. I don't see how a product geared towards specifically working on Windows XP cannot run/install properly on the box, but at least I am only out five dollars.


Their website is not very helpful and it does not have very much information, and browsing the LinkedIn profiles of their "Team" page on the website, it is hard to determine exactly who is employed by TrustPipe and who is not. I would love to hear from anyone who has actually used the product and am curious on their results with it. I was looking forward to testing some POS malware with TrustPipe running to see how it would fare, but due to the installation problems I don't even recommend getting the application for testing purposes. I also immediately called up my credit card company and cancelled the card that I made the purchase with. With the bad vibes that I felt going through the initial checkout process, I felt that it was best to cancel the card and request a new one, just in case.