18.11.2003
Anti-spam Managed Service Holds Back The Tide
Sandhurst, Berkshire, UK: Advascan confirms that it protected its service users from the new Mimail-J email borne virus for a full two days before major anti-virus companies caught up. Delays between identification and protection are inevitable for anti-virus companies as signatures are produced and distributed. Advascan proves that it closes this window of opportunity for viruses.
Andrey Lebedev, Advascan CTO says “This new virus was identified as suspect on Friday 14th but some traditional anti-virus vendors didn’t release signatures until Sunday 16th – meaning we gave 48 hours extra protection to our customers. The insidious new types of virus use a combination of message and payload to achieve their aim. Our email security technology is ideally placed to stop these types of attack.”
The latest virus Mimail.J is part of a class of worms that try to steal credit card or password data from victims, in this case Paypal users. This virus uses a combination of innocuous email content together with a series of disguised fake forms carried as attachments, but triggered by the user. The recipient is invited to re-enter payment details that are passed back to the virus writer, whilst the infection is spread automatically from the hijacked email inbox.
The virus was originally classed as low risk by many software providers, but it became a serious threat as it successfully spread through the net. It was caught by Advascan’s ASSESSOR™ heuristics engine, which analyses emails and their attachments against a set of experiential rules which are constantly changing, so trapping this new outbreak before new signatures are released by the traditional vendors.
Roy Walker, Advascan CEO said “Our success at stopping the spread of this particular virus is another example of why an anti-virus and anti-spam managed service is the best approach for protecting company email systems.”
NOTE TO EDITORS
About Advascan™
Advascan is an Internet technology and software development company, specialising in the areas of network security, intrusion detection and prevention, anti-virus, anti-spam, and email policy management. The online service, Advascan™ uses advanced anti-virus and anti-spam techniques to deliver best in class protection and email security, keeping email useful. Advascan is part of Adva Technologies Ltd.
For further details please visit http://www.advascan.com
For further information or to arrange an interview please call:
+44 (0)1276 37731 or call Mark Elliott at Advascan on 08450 539331
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