Presidential Election Cycle to Yield Unprecedented Level of Political Email Spam

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — SonicWALL, Inc. , a leading secure network infrastructure company, today forecasted that more than 5 billion political spam emails will attempt to reach the in-boxes of registered voters in the 30 days prior to the November 4, 2008 election. Political spam has increased dramatically since primary election, and will continue to do so in the 45-days prior to Election Day. Over the past 90 days alone, SonicWALL estimated a 20% percent increase in political spam.

“We have been closely monitoring the level of political spam during this presidential election cycle,” said Andy Klein, Product Marketing Manager at SonicWALL. “In 2004 we forecasted and saw about 1.25 Billion political email spam messages prior to the election. Given the rise in email spam in general, 5 Billion may be a bit conservative. Since the last presidential election cycle in 2004, e-mail has become one of the main forms of communication for candidates running for political office. Spammers will certainly take advantage of the level of excitement around the upcoming election, so both businesses and consumers should take measures to protect themselves against the growing deluge of email spam over the next 45 days.”

Political email is an email sent from or on behalf of a candidate for public office, or in support of a political issue or initiative. Such email has already reached new heights this election cycle as the Internet has been used by both candidates as a direct and interactive communication vehicle with registered voters. Email spammers and scammers, as well as advocates and dissidents, will be using the election lure to sneak past email spam filters to reach their desired targets.

SonicWALL has noted a consistently growing flow of political spam hitting voters’ inboxes since the beginning of the year. Certain news-driven events such as the recent party nominating conventions would spike the rise in spam to unprecedented levels surrounding those events. Since the primary elections, SonicWALL has seen a 20% percent consistent increase in political spam. At this rate, political spam will constitute 1-2% percent of all spam by Election Day on November 4.

For this election cycle, SonicWALL notes that businesses and consumers should be aware of three basic types of political oriented spam in order to protect themselves:

1) Real spam that uses the election as a hook to get you to open the spam message. The message itself has nothing to do with the election. This category includes on the spot “surveys” designed to get you to click on the link or picture which take you to a spammer’s web site. Approximately 90% of all spam will fall into this category.

2) Advocacy spam where a person or group sends out email spam to advocate a point of view. This could include legitimate messages that are sent out by either party or more likely their PACs that use purchased lists or messages sent to people who have opted in to receive such messages, but who have either forgotten they opted in or disagree with the message content itself and decide that to them it is spam. Political Email does not have to conform to the Can-Spam Act, so political parties are free to spam at will if they desire. 7 to 8 percent of political spam will fall into this category.

3) Scams such as phishing. Any ruse that is used to collect a person’s, personal or financial information utilizing the election is a candidate for this category. 2004 saw the first phishing email based on a political race, utilizing a John Kerry campaign contribution ruse to collect credit card information. While federal authorities are always on the lookout for these types of scams, they do continue to occur from time-to-time. 2 to 3 percent of political spam will fall into this category.

SonicWALL’s predictions are based on math and statistical research conducted over several election cycles. SonicWALL’s GRID Network collects nearly 1 billion email reputation inputs everyday. This information allows SonicWALL to dynamically identify new threat and trends and keep customers protected. SonicWALL’s research findings show that major political events such as Presidential races are coalescing events for spammers. SonicWALL has found that the closeness and uniqueness of the Presidential race attracts consumer’s attention to open potentially harmful e-mail that they wouldn’t normally open given the excitement of the race. For more information on how to protect yourself against spam, phishing and other e-mail attacks, go to: http://anti-spam.sonicwall.com/

About SonicWALL, Inc.

SonicWALL is committed to improving the performance and productivity of businesses of all sizes by engineering the cost and complexity out of running a secure network. Over one million SonicWALL appliances have been shipped through its global network of ten thousand channel partners to keep tens of millions of worldwide business computer users safe and in control of their data. SonicWALL’s award-winning solutions include network security, secure remote access, content security, backup and recovery, and policy and management technology. For more information, visit the company web site at http://www.sonicwall.com/.

Safe Harbor Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements include but are not limited to statements regarding the benefits of the SonicWALL GRID Network, forecast levels for political spam emails, trends associated with the use of political spam and the types of politically oriented spam. These forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the time the statements are made and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. In addition, please see the “Risk Factors” described in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, for a more detailed description of the risks facing our business. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to SonicWALL as of the date of the release, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement.

NOTE: SonicWALL is a registered trademark of SonicWALL, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

SonicWALL, Inc.

CONTACT: Colleen Nichols of SonicWALL, Inc., +1-408-962-6131,cnichols@sonicwall.com

Web site: http://www.sonicwall.com/