Commtouch Anti-Spam Solution Takes Some Bite Out of Bagle/Beagle Worm Attempting to Infiltrate Enterprises Cloaked As Spam.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 21, 2004

Real-time detection crucial in stopping the advance of the spam-virus

Commtouch(R) (Nasdaq:CTCH), a global developer and provider of proprietary enterprise anti-spam solutions, announced that users of its Commtouch Anti-Spam Solution benefited from automatic, real-time protection from a worm known as either Bagle or Beagle that started to spread widely across the Internet this weekend. Real-time detection and blocking of spam gives anti-virus companies breathing space to develop and push protection out to email users.

Bagle/Beagle is a new mass-mailing worm that was massively disseminated on Sunday, prompting antivirus software companies to raise threat alerts. The worm also opens an unassigned port, where it tries to listen for commands from the writer. Compared to recent attacks, like the Mimail-P worm and the Xombe Trojan, which looked like legitimate messages from PayPal and Microsoft, respectively, the Bagle/Beagle message uses the subject line "Hi," and the message contains randomly generated gibberish.

"Only the real-time protection offered by Commtouch's unique statistical analysis techniques can produce this level of responsiveness," said Commtouch Executive Vice President Avner Amram. "We had great success in combating the SoBig-F worm in 2003 and again our Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD) (TM) technology is proving to be effective in identifying spam that carries a virus and protecting customers that have the Commtouch anti-spam solution or an Anti-Spam solution provided by Commtouch OEM partners."

Commtouch takes a fundamentally different approach to the prevention of spam in the enterprise. The solution, which utilizes RPD technology, comprises a gateway that integrates with Microsoft Exchange and a remote detection center that analyzes recurrent patterns in traffic from millions of email messages per hour. Unlike other enterprise solutions, Commtouch Anti-Spam does not rely on any form of content filtering to determine whether an email message is spam but instead undertakes statistical analysis of email message characteristics to provide high levels of protection against any format of spam in any language or in any kind of rich media text or images.

"Once again, our customers have the protection from potentially harmful virus attacks such as the Beagle/Bagle worm," said Tim Burke, CEO, Quest. "Commtouch Anti-Spam safeguards our customers from the further spread of these viruses in their organizations, and we are pleased to be able to provide them this additional layer of protection."

About Commtouch

Commtouch Software Ltd. is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam solutions. Its mission is to protect and preserve the integrity of the world's most important communications tool-- email. The company's core technologies reflect its decade of experience as a leading vendor of email software applications and provider of global messaging services. Commtouch's patent-pending technologies are employed in solutions that are sold through channels and resellers and also are sold directly to enterprises. In addition, Commtouch anti-spam technologies are incorporated in software applications of security and messaging OEMs. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel and its subsidiary, Commtouch Inc., is based in Mountain View, CA. The company was founded in 1991 and has been publicly traded since 1999 (Nasdaq:CTCH). To learn more about Commtouch visit www.commtouch.com

Recurrent Pattern Detection is a trademark and Commtouch is a registered trademark of Commtouch Software Ltd.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including projections about our business, within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. For example, statements in the future tense, and statements including words such as "expect", "plan", "estimate", anticipate", or "believe" are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on information available to us at the time of the release; we assume no obligation to update any of them. The statements in this release are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations as a result of numerous factors, including business conditions and growth or deterioration in the Internet market, commerce and the general economy both domestic as well as international; fewer than expected new-partner relationships; competitive factors including pricing pressures; technological developments, and products offered by competitors; availability of qualified staff for expansion; and technological difficulties and resource constraints encountered in developing new products as well as those risks described in the company's Annual Reports on Form 20-F and reports on Form 6-K, which are available through www.sec.gov.