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Research Shows High Percentage of Remote File Inclusion and SQL Injection Attacks Are Automated 

Redwood Shores, Calif., April 24, 2012 –Imperva, Inc. (NYSE:  IMPV), a pioneer and leader of a new category of data security solutions for high-value business data in the data center, today released its April Hacker Intelligence Report Automation of Attacks, which analyzes how and why attacks on Web applications are automated. According to Imperva’s research from January – March 2012, as much as 98 percent of Remote File Inclusion (RFI) attacks are automated, and as much as 88 percent of SQL injection attacks are automated, including by two software tools: Havij and sqlmap.

Automatic tools generally enable hackers to attack more applications and exploit vulnerabilities more efficiently than manual methods. Automatic tools available online save hackers the trouble of studying vulnerabilities and learning how to exploit them.

“Using automated software tools, even an unskilled attacker can attack applications in a short period of time, potentially collect valuable data and move on to the next target,” said Amichai Shulman, CTO, Imperva. “Automated tools can be used to evade an enterprise’s security defenses.”

Highlights from Automation of Attacks include:

Automation Identification Methods – Traffic characteristics, such as attack rate, attack rate change and attack volume, can be used to identify automated attacks. Imperva provides detailed analysis of these characteristics.

Automated Attack Trends – Automated tools can leave ‘fingerprints’ or patterns that can be extracted from the source code to identify an automated attack with high certainty. Imperva analyzes common code strings and parameters of these tools.

Automated Attack Mitigation – Imperva provides analysis of multiple real-world attack vectors, highlighting characteristics security professionals can use to define malicious traffic, enabling black lists of suspected IP addresses.

To download the full report, please visit: http://www.imperva.com/download.asp?id=360.

Get up to date security news at the Imperva Data Security blog: http://www.blog.imperva.com/

About Imperva

Imperva is a pioneer and leader of a new category of data security solutions for high-value business data in the data center. With more than 1,700 end-user customers and thousands of organizations protected through cloud-based deployments, Imperva’s customers include leading enterprises, government organizations, and managed service providers who rely on Imperva to prevent sensitive data theft from hackers and insiders. The award-winning Imperva SecureSphere identifies and secures high-value data across file systems, web applications and databases. For more information, visit www.imperva.com, follow us on Twitter or visit our blog.

© 2012 Imperva, Inc. All rights reserved. Imperva, the Imperva logo and SecureSphere are trademarks of Imperva, Inc.