Press Releases
See Exploit Prevention Labs at Innovation Station Booth 1338,
RSA Conference 2007 February 5-9
EXPLOIT PREVENTION LABS UPDATES LINKSCANNER SAFE SURFING PRODUCT LINE
WITH SUPPORT FOR VISTA AND FIREFOX
LinkScanner 2.5 Runs Under Vista, Extends SearchShield Support to Firefox Users
February 5, 2007 – Atlanta, GA and San Francisco, CA – Exploit Prevention Labs (http://www.explabs.com), a leading developer of safe surfing software for protection against web-based exploits, today unveiled at the RSA Conference in San Francisco the latest in its LinkScanner product line with support for Windows Vista and the Firefox web browser. With the new platform and browser support, LinkScanner now provides the industry’s broadest and most effective protection against malicious web sites, phishing, social engineering and other web-based exploits.
LinkScanner Pro™ is a $29.95 Windows application that provides real-time, automatic protection against malicious web sites, drive-by downloads and other crimeware exploits encountered through search engine results, hyperlinks, and manually-entered URLs. LinkScanner Lite is a free application that provides Internet Explorer and Firefox users with real-time scanning of Google, MSN and Yahoo search results for web-based threats, as well as on-demand scanning of individual links. LinkScanner Online provides a free on-demand service for scanning individual links.
“Vista is the most secure Windows operating system Microsoft has produced, yet it remains vulnerable to exploits, as recent proof-of-concept exercises have demonstrated,” said Roger Thompson, co-founder and CTO of Exploit Prevention Labs. “All indications show that consumers will adopt Vista before corporations do, giving cybercriminals plenty of time to hone their exploit development skills before going after the enterprise. But of course, previous generations of Windows will continue to be in use for years to come, with the bad guys still targeting all versions of Windows.”
LinkScanner Delivers Industry’s Most Reliable Protection Against Web-based Exploits
The LinkScanner family of safe surfing software and services delivers the industry’s most reliable real-time protection against web-based exploits and malicious web sites. LinkScanner works by monitoring the web browser’s data stream in real time, blocking web-based exploits and malicious web sites before they can gain access to the user’s computer. Building on Exploit Prevention Labs’ patent-pending anti-exploit technology, the LinkScanner family offers SearchShield™ functionality to protect users against malicious hyperlinks in search engine results. The products also protect against malicious phishing, social engineering, and warez web sites that distribute cracked software, and advertising networks known to distribute malicious text and banner ads.
Conventional safe surfing applications such as McAfee® SiteAdvisor, which judge web site safety based on historical data, are recognized as delivering results that are up to 50% inaccurate. SiteAdvisor’s static, database-centric approach is simply inadequate to deal with the highly dynamic nature of today’s web environment. LinkScanner’s real-time approach, by contrast, delivers definitive information about the threats present on any web site at the only time that matters – the time the user is about to click through to that site.
LinkScanner Backed by Exploit Prevention Labs’ Patent-Pending Intelligence Network
LinkScanner is powered by Exploit Prevention Labs’ patent-pending Intelligence Network, which brings together a unique combination of research techniques:
- Exploit Intelligence is an extended network of human researchers, automated probes, “hunting pots” (proactive honeypots), and search bots focused on discovering new vulnerabilities and exploit examples.
- The Reputation Filter creates an intelligent filter for known and suspected exploit distribution sites.
- Community Intelligence is the community of LinkScanner users who allow information about attempted exploitation of their computers to be collected as part of the Intelligence Network. This allows LinkScanner users to serve as an extension of Exploit Prevention Labs’ research efforts. This community of users serves as a virtual “Neighborhood Watch for the Web” - their systems automatically report new malicious web sites, hyperlinks and exploits back to Exploit Prevention Labs researchers.
- SiteID digs beneath the surface of any site’s publicly-stated ownership to determine whether a site is actively in use by a recognized individual or entity, or whether the site is really operated by the individual or entity that claims to own it.
- The Correlation Engine aggregates intelligence gained through this research, assembles it in real time, and distributes it transparently back to the community, providing exploit-specific protection within minutes of a zero-day exploit discovery.
LinkScanner Provides Reliable Protection against Web-based Exploits in a Lightweight Application
Unlike many security software products that sap memory, disk space and computing resources, LinkScanner products are extremely lightweight. LinkScanner Pro requires only 10MB of RAM and 4MB of hard disk space, and LinkScanner Lite requires even less. Both products support Windows 2000, XP and Vista and require minimal computing resources to operate.
The LinkScanner family provides a critical layer of security that complements and extends the defenses provided by traditional security solutions. Firewalls cannot stop exploits because exploits use the trusted communications stream of the browser connection to gain access to the user’s computer. Anti-virus and anti-spyware applications can’t protect against exploits because they must wait for the malware code to hit the hard disk in order to detect it, by which time the exploits have already executed their payload. Patch management systems can’t distribute a patch until the application vendor releases it, often weeks or months after the discovery of a security vulnerability. And patching as a general practice, while critical, is itself vulnerable because it frequently relies on users taking action of their own volition.
Pricing and Availability
LinkScanner Pro and LinkScanner Lite are now available from Exploit Prevention Labs’ web site at http://www.explabs.com and through the company’s network of resellers and affiliates.
LinkScanner Pro is priced at $29.95, including a one-year subscription for unlimited updates and online technical support. A fully functional 15-day evaluation can be downloaded from http:// www.explabs.com/downloads/LSP Licensed LinkScanner users will receive an automatic upgrade to LinkScanner 2.5 as part of their current subscription.
LinkScanner Lite, which offers many of the same features as LinkScanner Pro but without the convenient automation, is free and can be downloaded from http:// www.explabs.com/downloads/LSL LinkScanner Online, available at http://linkscanner.explabs.com, is a free real-time online URL scanning service that lets users know whether any individual site they intend to visit has been poisoned by an exploit distribution network. LinkScanner Online supports all major web browsers and is freely available for incorporation into third-party websites. Interested webmasters can request the code through Exploit Prevention Labs’ website at http://www.explabs.com/LinkScanner/MyLinkScanner/.
The LinkScanner Software Development Kit (SDK) enables third-party developers to incorporate LinkScanner technology and research into their own applications and services.
About Exploit Prevention Labs
Founded by information security veterans Bob Bales and Roger Thompson in 2005, Exploit Prevention Labs develops the LinkScanner family of safe surfing software and services. LinkScanner Pro, LinkScanner Lite and LinkScanner Online provide patent-pending protection against malicious web sites and web-based exploits during the critical risk window between the announcement of a security vulnerability and the provision of a patch by the vendor. More information about Exploit Prevention Labs and LinkScanner may be found on the company’s website at http://www.explabs.com.
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