Cyberguard’s Webwasher Thwarts Today’s Dangerous Sober.I Attack
Bracknell, UK. – (22 November 2004) – A dangerous mass-mailing worm that uses its own SMTP engine to spread itself threatens to be a dreaded zero day attack. “Zero day” refers to an exploit, either a worm or a virus, that arrives immediately following or even before there is a public announcement of a vulnerability in a computer system. Customers using the newest versions of Webwasher Content Security Management (CSM), Antivirus or Content Protection solutions from CyberGuard Corporation (Nasdaq:CGFW), a provider of proven, intelligent, security solutions that protect business-critical assets at global 2,000 organizations and government entities worldwide, are protected from Sober.I infections through Webwasher’s “proactive filtering” capability. “Many antivirus vendors do not yet recognize the new worm, which is why proactive filtering is so critical,” explained Horst Joepen, president of CyberGuard’s Webwasher division. “Traditional antivirus technology must first identify new viruses and worms before they can develop and release protection, but proactive filtering identifies anomalies so users can prevent infiltration from brand-new worms and viruses in the first place.”
The mass-mailing worm – W32.Sober.I -is a variant of the Sober worm which caused worldwide havoc in early 2003. The worm arrives as a .com, .bat, .scr, .pif or .zip attachment in e-mails with various subject lines – in English or German – and various text bodies in the e-mails. It also hides in innocent looking .doc-, xls- and txt-files that are, in reality, executable attachments. Sober.I propagates by sending itself from infected desktops as a ZIP archive to addresses it gathers from the infected computer. Webwasher’s proactive content filtering recognizes and blocks the corrupted format.
How Proactive Content Filtering Works
Similar to how medical researchers protect against new viruses that spread throughout a population by first identifying the composition of the virus and then developing an anti-virus, anti-virus security vendors traditionally detect new viruses and develop protection based on patterns in those viruses. The process from detection to developing protection and making it available can take several hours. Highly publicized worms such as Blaster, MyDoom and Bagel infected computers worldwide in just a few hours. By contrast, proactive technologies analyze Web and e-mail traffic looking for certain abnormalities, objects or combination of objects and code, thus protecting against worms and viruses whose patterns are not yet known and preventing Zero Day attacks. Proactive filtering technology in Webwasher version 5.1 protects against malicious files and is part of Webwasher Antivirus and Webwasher Content Protection products.
About CyberGuard Corporation
CyberGuard Corporation (Nasdaq:CGFW) provides proven, intelligent, security solutions that protect business-critical information assets of Global 2,000 companies and government entities worldwide. The company’s firewall/VPN, Total Stream Protection(tm), Global Command Center(tm) and Webwasher(r) product suites comprise a comprehensive, integrated security system, which offers highly adaptive, scalable solutions that intelligently guard against network intrusion and content-based vulnerabilities, detecting and eliminating security threats in real-time for performance optimization. CyberGuard has deployed more than 250,000 products in companies around the world to maintain the health and integrity of their enterprises. Headquartered near Boca Raton, Florida, the company has branch offices and training centers around the globe and can be located on the World Wide Web at www.cyberguard.com.
Forward-Looking Statement
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CyberGuard(r) and Webwasher(r) are registered trademarks and Total Stream Protection(tm) and Global Command Center(tm) are trademarks of CyberGuard Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.