Blue Coat WebPulse Collaborative Defense hits significant milestone

Blue Coat Systems, a leading provider of Web security and WAN optimization solutions, today announced that the Blue Coat WebPulse collaborative defense reached a significant milestone by serving one billion requests for Web content in a single day. The high volume of requests gives Blue Coat greater visibility into Web and malware ecosystems, enabling Blue Coat Security Labs to more effectively identify and track malnets (malware networks) and proactively protect 75 million WebPulse users from new attacks. 

More than 20 percent of the one billion requests were for Search Engines/Portals. This category of content is consistently the most requested and is also the leading entry point through which users access malnets (malware networks). More than 10 percent of the requests were for Social Networking, which was the third most requested category of content. 

Of the one billion requests, there were more than one million requests to access content identified as Malware Sources. An additional 1.4 million requests were made to access content related to communications from Malicious Outbound Data/Botnets, indicating that a significant number of infected computers were attempting to contact command and control servers. There were more than 3 million requests for content categorized as Suspicious, which is often associated with known malnets. 

WebPulse receives real-time requests from businesses, consumers, government organizations, schools and universities worldwide.  The diversity of these requests provides WebPulse with a holistic view of the Web ecosystem and results in a more effective collaborative defense that protects all users when malware is discovered. 

“WebPulse is a powerful defense that analyzes and correlates a massive amount of information about the Web ecosystem to identify and track the malnets that are responsible for launching attacks on unsuspecting users,” said Nigel Hawthorn, VP EMEA Marketing at Blue Coat Systems. “The more requests WebPulse receives, the more we understand how these malnets work, the tactics they use and the exploits they serve, which allows us to better protect users through our collaborative defense.”

In September, WebPulse proactively protected users from the latest attack from the Shnakule malnet in which MySQL.com was hacked and serving malicious JavaScript that enabled a drive-by download. The high volume of web requests that WebPulse receives and analyzes on a daily basis allows Blue Coat Security Labs to track Shnakule and other malnets to dynamically identify new threats.