Cybersecurity Analyst Aaron Barr gets fired again

Aaron Barr has had quite an interesting year. He first got attention for being CEO of HBGary Federal and claiming to be close to exposing the leaders of the hacking collective Anonymous. Now Barr has been fired from his current position at another federal contractor, Sayres and Associates.

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Back in February of 2011 when Barr was CEO of HBGary Federal he claimed to be very close to figuring out who the leaders of Anonymous actually were. The hacking collective didn't take kindly to that claim and immediately struck back by hacking HBGary and releasing a slew of internal emails. Those emails proved that the company was working for a law firm which was working with the US Chamber of Commerce. The goal of this strange combination was to damage Wikileaks by feeding false information.

When this scheme was uncovered Barr responded by stepping down from his position at HBGary and taking a new job at  Sayres and Associates where he has been until now. That company is another federal contractor that does work with both the US Navy and the Department of Homeland Security.

John Sayers, the company's founder talked briefly about what he expected when hiring Barr and what he actually got.

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"When I hired Aaron about eight months ago, it was under the perception that we were going to be able to help the NSA with some things relating to national security, not with Anonymous and social groups.

Apparently hiring Barr brought nothing but trouble to Sayers and Associates, "When I brought him on I said hey, we'll give him six months and see how he can help our company -- and I saw no help, all I saw was things I didn't want to see," said Sayers.

Barr tried to infiltrate Occupy Wall Street by dying his hair blue and trying to talk with protestors. Barr's name was also mentioned in several emails written by another analyst Thomas Ryan who got onto an Occupy Wall Street organization email list and leaked some of those messages to the FBI.

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Apparently the final straw for Barr's employers was his speech at a recent FBI-sponsored cybersecurity conference entitled, “How I learned to stop worrying and love social media."

"I never got a copy of what he was presenting at the conferences," said Sayres. "He was kind of like a cowboy, off on his own and doing his own thing, and that's not how I run the company."

When the Huffington Post asked Barr about the separation he called it "amicable" and said that he already had a new job but wouldn't say where. One can only hope his new position isn't in Cybersecurity or he's at least figured out how to stay out of the news.

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