The Internet Trust Problem

Websites and APIs rely on internet infrastructure that can be attacked through impersonation, BGP hijacking, and certificate fraud. These aren't theoretical risks — they represent fundamental vulnerabilities in the way the internet establishes trust between servers and users.

Henry Birge-Lee invented Multi-Perspective Issuance Corroboration (MPIC), a protocol that now secures every single HTTPS connection worldwide. By verifying certificate issuance from multiple network vantage points, MPIC prevents attackers from obtaining fraudulent certificates through infrastructure manipulation.

What They're Building

Crosslayer Labs detects impersonation attacks on websites and APIs through comprehensive monitoring of internet dependencies. The team comes from Princeton, where they did pioneering research in web and network security.

Co-founded by Birge-Lee, Grace Cimaszewski — a Princeton PhD who worked with the CA/Browser Forum on TLS certificate security and visited Google and Corelight Labs — and Prateek Mittal, a Princeton professor and ACM Grace Hopper Award recipient. Together, they bring deep academic expertise in internet security to a commercial product that enterprises need.

Why It Matters

Their research has already helped secure every HTTPS connection worldwide through MPIC. Now they're commercializing this expertise to proactively protect enterprises from sophisticated internet infrastructure attacks. As organizations become increasingly dependent on web services and APIs, the ability to detect and prevent impersonation attacks at the infrastructure level represents a critical layer of defense.