Offensive Security  Offensive Security is an American international company working in information security, penetration testing and digital forensics. Operating from around 2007, the company created open source projects, advanced security courses, ExploitDB (Vulnerability database) and the Kali Linux distribution. The company was started by Mati Aharoni, and employs security professionals with experience in security penetration testing and system security evaluation. The company has provided security counseling and training to the many technology companies. The company also provides training courses and certifications. Mati Aharoni, Offensive Security’s co-founder, started the business around 2006 with his wife Iris. Offensive Security LLC was formed in 2008. The company was structured as Offensive Security Services, LLC in 2012 in North Carolina. In September 2019 the company received its first venture capital investment, from Spectrum Equity, and CEO Ning Wang replaced Joe Steinbach, the previous CEO for four years, who ran the business from the Philippines. Jim O’Gorman, the company’s chief strategy officer, also gives training and writes books. Customers include Cisco, Wells Fargo, Booz Allen Hamilton, and defense-related U.S. government agencies. The company gives training sessions at the annual Black Hat hacker conference. In 2019, J.M. Porup of CSO online wrote "few infosec certifications have developed the prestige in recent years of the Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP)," and said it has "a reputation for being one of the most difficult," because it requires student to hack into a test network during a difficult "24-hour exam." He also summarized accusations of cheating, and Offensive Security's responses, concluding hiring based only on credentials was a mistake, and an applicants skills should be validated. In 2020, cybersecurity professional Matt Day of Start a Cyber Career, writing a detailed review and comparison of OSCP and CompTIA PenTest+, said OSCP was "well known in the pentesting community, and therefore well known by the managers that hire them." In addition to their training and security services, the company also founded open source projects, online exploit databases and security information teaching aids. The company is known for developing Kali Linux, which is a Debian Linux based distribution modeled after BackTrack. It succeeds BackTrack Linux, and is designed for security information needs, such as penetration testing and digital forensics. Kali NetHunter is Offensive Security’s project for the ARM architecture and Android devices. Kali Linux contains over 600 security programs. The release of the second version (2.0) received a wide coverage in the digital media Offensive Security provides a book, "Kali Linux Revealed", and makes the first edition available for free download.