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Security outfit Root9B on the brink after default, may de-list

Listed company's creditors are circling so it's auctioning assets

Colorado security startup Root9B is teetering on the edge, with its creditors sending over a foreclosure nastygram after it defaulted last week.

As noted in an 8-K filing that landed late last week, “The events described above are likely to continue to put pressure on the Company’s stock price, and could render its securities worthless if concluded.”

At this point, the investors chasing the company intend to auction its assets by 31 August 2018, if Root9B can't raise enough capital to settle thing down by that point.

What's on offer in the auction is pretty much “anything we can find”, although the notice at the Securities and Exchange Commission doesn't hint at exactly how tangible those assets might be.

On August 16, the company also received a show-cause from Nasdaq, putting it on notice that if it didn't bring its filings into line by October, its listing was in danger.

“There can be no assurance the Company will be able to regain compliance with Nasdaq’s rules”, the company notes.

Its best chance at this stage seems to be for Root9B to secure a waiver from creditors so it can get enough funds to restructure.

According to DarkReading, the Chertoff Group (set up by former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff) is one potential white knight.

That would be in line with Root9B's natsec connections: former CEO and non-executive chairman Joseph Grano was once a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Root9B had tried to expand into money-laundering investigations and enterprise risk management via its 2015 acquisition of a company called IPSA, which it split away in August 2016.

Root9B company would be best known to readers of The Register by way of one of its researchers, Matthew Weeks. Back in 2014 he created a Metasploit module that turned the tide on tech support scammers by taking over their Ammyy Admin remote control software.

Later, again on his own time, Weeks had a close and none-too-complimentary look at Microsoft's “Just Enough Administration” PowerShell feature. ®

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