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Fortinet Protects Against Latest Sober Variant W32/Sober.M-mm

SUNNYVALE, Calif.,March 07, 2005 - Fortinet - the confirmed market leader in Unified Threat Management (UTM) and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection -today announced that its FortiGate™ systems and FortiClient Host Security software protect against the latest Sober variant, W32/Sober.M-mm, also known as Sober.L. A mass-mailer that follows the footsteps of previous Sober variants in style and function, W32/Sober.M-mm, targets email recipients by harvesting addresses from an infected system and then sends emails with a viral attachment. The mail attachments have a .PIF or .ZIP extension. Fortinet currently rates the latest Sober variant a Level Two worm, but notes it has the potential to be a higher threat in the future.

Visible symptoms of the latest Sober variant, W32/Sober.M-mm, include:

  • Possible firewall alert that a file "smss.exe" is attempting to access the Internet using DNS
  • Newly created "System" folder in the %windows%\msagent folder
  • Newly created files on the infected system in the System32 folder

FortiGate systems are kept up to date automatically through Fortinet's family of FortiGuard™ subscription updates, which ensure 24x7 protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware and other threats. To protect customers against W32/Sober.M-mm, Fortinet published antivirus database 4.618 for its worldwide FortiGate systems and FortiClient Host Security software less than two hours after receiving the first virus sample. With this latest antivirus database update, Fortinet's FortiGate systems can block the infectious email attachment at the gateway before it enters customers' networks, or on the host with the FortiClient Host Software.

For more information on W32/Sober.M-mm, visit Fortinet's FortiProtect Center at:
http://www.fortinet.com/VirusEncyclopedia/search/encyclopediaSearch.do?m...

For more information about Fortinet's FortiGate systems and FortiClient Host Security software, please visit: http://www.fortinet.com/products/

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)

Fortinet is the confirmed leader of Unified Threat Management market. The company's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated multi-threat security systems, winner of the 2004 Security Product of the Year Award from Network Computing Magazine and the 2003 Networking Industry Awards Firewall Product of the Year, are the new generation of real-time network protection systems. They detect and eliminate the most damaging, content-based threats from e-mail and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate Web content and more in real time - without degrading network performance. Fortinet's solutions are the only security products that are certified seven times over by the ICSA (firewall, antivirus, IPSec, SSL, IDS, client antivirus detection and cleaning), and deliver a full range of network-level and application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms. Named a Light Reading Top 10 Private Company and #4 on Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal's "Fast 50" list, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.

 

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Most manufacturers were able to offer two out of our three desired security functions but Fortinet was the only vendor with the capability to provide all three in a single security solution, while meeting our high expectations in terms of performance and cost effectiveness. On top of providing first-class security, the flexibility of the FortiGate systems allows our security solution to evolve on a per-region basis, as and when required. Moving forward, Fortinet's integrated approach means that other security functions such as SSL VPN, firewall and traffic shaping can be switched as per a country's individual requirements. As a fast-growing acquisitive company, this made for a very compelling proposition.

Kevin Braim
Group IT Services Director
TNS