Panda Mauls Spam

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Originally published at Internet.com

Panda Software is adding a new trick to go along with the virus busting and Web filtering capabilities of the firm's Gatedefender 8000 series of security appliances.

A newly announced Anti-spam module grants the Gatedefender 8050 the ability to scan up to 120,000 messages an hour. Going up the model line, this rate increases to 300,000 messages/hour for the 8100 and 600,000 messages/hour for the high-end 8200.

The hardware is able to perform its spam-blocking activities courtesy of four scan engines, each backing up the other by running its own checks on all e-mail sent to an organization. According to the company, they are: * SpamBulk: Compares the message with an internal list of known spam messages that have previously been sent out in bulk.

* SpamReput: Checks if the sender is in the internal list of known spammers.

* SpamContent: Scans the content of the message, checking the style, design, language and text, breaking it down into minimum pieces in order to detect key words, even if the words are not an exact match.

* SpamTricks: Checks if the message contains technical tricks usually used by spammers, such as image-only messages, HTML obfuscation, etc. The latter also helps combat phishing, a particularly sneaky tactic used by scammers where they mask their illegal activities behind convincingly crafted Web pages and e-mail, seemingly from the legitimate businesses.

Naturally, Gatedefender 8000 also offers blacklist and whitelist support, plus the requisite Web-based control panel. From there, admins can set various parameters for messages identified as spam. They include deletion, forwarding or passing them along to end users with modified Subject: lines.

Gatedefender 8000 series appliances with the integrated anti-spam component are currently shipping. Final pricing is determined by the number of seats the hardware serves.