Barracuda Networks, Inc., a leading provider of network security appliances, today announced that its Barracuda Spam Firewall has implemented specific countermeasures to block the phishing malware attacks targeted at salesforce.com users. These attacks were outlined in a broadcast email yesterday to all salesforce.com users advising them of the latest malware threat.
The attack on the salesforce.com user base is a variant of known attacks that attempt to lure users into installing malware that can collect passwords to online systems, including banks, credit cards, shopping Web sites, and even salesforce.com itself.
“What makes this form of the attack unique is its social engineering,” said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management for Barracuda Networks. “The email masquerades itself as part of the Salesforce Identity Confirmation feature, which ironically was intended to enhance legitimate salesforce.com security measures against the latest wave of phishing attacks. Because of its clever design, unsuspecting salesforce.com users may inadvertently install the malware.
“While existing defense layers targeting malware in the Barracuda Spam Firewall have been effectively blocking these attacks, Barracuda Central today added another layer of defense specifically targeting this social engineering,” added Pao.
Barracuda Central, an advanced technology center at Barracuda Networks, consisting of highly trained engineers who continuously monitor and block the latest Internet threats, responded to the salesforce.com announcement by quickly adding additional levels of protection in the event that the attack starts using new malware variants. The additional levels of protection involve rules that actually block the social engineering around the Salesforce Identity Confirmation feature in addition to the malware.
“Just as Barracuda Networks was the first major appliance vendor to target the attacks against Adobe Reader users in 2007, we are proud to be the first to specifically target the attacks against salesforce.com users in 2008,” said Pao. “The tactical response of Barracuda Central combined with the Barracuda Spam Firewall's 12 defense layers allows us to continue to supply the best spam protection at the best value in the industry.”
About the Barracuda Spam Firewall
The Barracuda Spam Firewall is available in seven models and supports up to 30,000 active users with no per user licensing fees. Its architecture leverages 12 defense layers: denial of service and security protection, rate control, IP analysis, sender authentication, recipient verification, virus protection, policy (user-specified rules), Fingerprint Analysis, Intent Analysis, Image Analysis, Bayesian Analysis, and a Spam Rules Scoring engine. In addition, the entire Barracuda Spam Firewall line features simultaneous inbound and outbound email filtering with the inclusion of sophisticated outbound email filtering techniques, such as rate controls, domain restrictions, user authentication (SASL), keyword and attachment blocking, dual layer virus blocking, and remote user support for outbound email filtering. The Barracuda Spam Firewall’s layered approach minimizes the processing of each email, which yields the performance required to process millions of messages per day. For more information on the Barracuda Spam Firewall, visit http://www.barracuda.com/spam.
About Barracuda Networks Inc.
Barracuda Networks Inc. is the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances. Barracuda Networks also provides world-class IM protection, application server load balancing and message archiving appliances. More than 50,000 companies, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, Harvard University, IBM, L'Oreal, NASA and Europcar, are protecting their networks with Barracuda Networks solutions. Barracuda Networks' success is due to its ability to deliver easy to use, comprehensive solutions that solve the most serious issues facing customer networks without unnecessary add-ons, maintenance, lengthy installations or per user license fees. Barracuda Networks is privately held with its headquarters in Campbell, Calif. Barracuda Networks has offices in eight international locations and distributors in more than 80 countries worldwide. For more information, please visit www.barracuda.com.