full-disclosure - Re: Barracuda backdoor

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Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:09:46 -0400
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu
To: Tõnu Samuel <tonu@....ee>
Cc: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Barracuda backdoor

On Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:09:14 +0300, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?T=F5nu_Samuel?= said:

> One day their Barracuda product stopped working.

OK... That's hardly surprising, given the high-quality software engineering
that Barracuda is known for.. ;)

> Barracuda not only disabled all kind of subscription services but also
> used some kind of backdoor in their products to disable product customer
> had paid long time ago.

And I should believe this claim, why?

> Message was shown "Error: Activation has not been completed. Please
> activate your Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall to enable functionality.
> (Click here to activate)". Customer was blocked to make any changes in
> admin interface of product. Even more irritating was fact that admin
> wanted to see why some e-mails were lost and was denied even to see logs!

Strong claims require strong evidence.  It's well-known that Barracuda turns
off subscription services if you don't pay - and even charges you back coverage
for years you skipped.  See the thread starting here:

http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2011-April/035067.html

Now the question is - given that *that* Barracuda was at least semi-functional
even when off support, do we have any indication that your unit was in fact
intentionally disabled?  It could very well be the symptoms you are seeing are
the unit being just plain *broken*.

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