Kelkea Stops New Network Exploitation by Spammers; Threat Is More Serious to Security Than ''Zombies''.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Kelkea, Inc., the leading authority on reputation services, has identified another delivery method being used by spammers. Spammers have found a way to hi-jack legitimate IP addresses by exploiting a weakness in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) that is used to direct and manage traffic between networks. These BGP attacks pose a very serious threat to Internet security. Kelkea's engineering team saw a significant BGP attack occur last month and was able to immediately implement a solution to prevent the attack from affecting its customers.

"As part of our ongoing network management and monitoring I recently noticed that spammers were beginning to use BGP attacks to send their millions of spam messages. This is particularly significant because it demonstrates a new level of technical expertise and the security implications for this are chilling," explained Dave Rand, CEO of Kelkea. "As a result of our focus on the methods used to deliver spam -- not the content of the spam -- we are often the first to notice unusual trends in communication between mail servers. Our networking expertise enables us to anticipate new spamming techniques and we are able to have a solution ready to deploy, as was the case with these BGP attacks."

By using this technique, spammers can impersonate a legitimate network by using BGP to temporarily override the legitimate network's routes with fraudulent routes and send their messages directly into the mail stream. Typically the spammer will choose IP addresses that are seldom used by the legitimate network and often not monitored, thus allowing their use to go undetected. The spam messages appear to come from the legitimate network even though the traffic never passed through that network's servers or routers. These attacks are brief and the spammer quickly withdraws the BGP overrides to escape detection, moving on to another vulnerable source. By exploiting underused address blocks with BGP override routes, spammers can compromise security at the core of the Internet.

The Kelkea Threat Analysis team is continually monitoring traffic across the Internet and tracking sources of spam and network abuse. By detecting new exploits early and responding immediately, Kelkea is able to offer an evolving solution that addresses the changing requirements of our customers. In addition to this latest threat of BGP attacks, the Kelkea Reputation Service is able to detect and block Zombie attacks in real-time. Because these attacks are short-lived and transient, these sources are only blocked as they are actively sending spam.

The Kelkea Anti-spam Service(SM) leverages the reputation database and provides valuable information to our customers enabling them to block both Zombie and BGP attacks. This service greatly reduces the volume of spam entering the messaging infrastructure, as well as incidents of viruses, phishing and DOS attacks.

About Kelkea, Inc.

Kelkea is the leading authority on reputation services. Kelkea utilizes its networking expertise and industry-leading reputation databases to stay ahead of the curve. We deliver solutions and services that protect our customers' investments in their networks, messaging infrastructure and online transactions. Kelkea has developed and launched its first dynamic Reputation Service, the Kelkea Anti-Spam Service. The Company's Reputation Services provide valuable information to customers that reduce the volume of spam, as well as incidents of viruses, phishing and DOS attacks. Kelkea offers the most reliable reputation management services and is leveraging them to continue to develop standards and solutions for stopping the flow of unsolicited mail and to ensure secure communications throughout the Internet.

For more information, visit www.kelkea.com.

Kelkea and Kelkea Anti-spam Service are proprietary marks of Kelkea. All other company names and marks may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.