Barracuda Networks

Barracuda Networks, Inc. is one of the world leaders in email and Web protection. In addition, Barracuda Networks organizes IM security systems, server load balancing systems, and message archiving. Since its inception, Barracuda Networks has received endorsement from customers, media, and analysts for its high level of service, first-class products, and attractive partner programs. More than 50,000 companies and organizations around the world use Barracuda Networks network security solutions. The list of Barracuda Networks main products includes: Barracuda Spam Firewall, Barracuda Web Filter, Barracuda IM Firewall.

History

2022: KKR bought Barracuda Networks for $4 billion

April 12, 2022 it became known about the sale of Barracuda Networks to the investment giant KKR. Through this deal, the IT company hopes to "accelerate business growth" by further advancing to key security markets such as managed discovery and response, advanced discovery and response, and secure access technology (SASE).

It is planned to close the deal before the end of 2022. Its terms were not disclosed, but, according to Reuters, the acquisition cost is $4 billion, including debt obligations.

April 12, 2022 it became known about the sale of Barracuda Networks to the investment giant KKR.

In acquiring Barracuda, KKR said it intends to provide resources to further expand the company's offerings and revenues, which already amount to more than $500 million. In addition to expanding in managed detection and response, Barracuda will also continue to grow aggressively in promising security markets, such as advanced detection and response and SASE technology, the report said.

We continue to consider cybersecurity a very attractive sector and are pleased to support a clear leader in this area, said John Park, head of Americas Technology Private Equity at KKR, in a statement. Given our proven experience of growth and innovation, we believe that Barracuda has the right team and model to take over the business in this growing market.

Bradley Brown, managing director of KKR, said in a statement that he sees "tremendous opportunities for long-term growth" for Barracuda. Hatem Naguib, Barracuda CEO, also expressed optimism about his company's long-term commitment to KKR

We believe that with the support of KKR, we will continue to invest in growth and develop a culture that will give our team the resources and inspiration to continue to create and deliver the next generation of leading cybersecurity solutions for our customers and partners, Naguib said in a statement.

After the planned takeover at the end of 2022, Barracuda will implement a broad KKR employee attraction program, which provides that employees become co-owners of companies acquired by KKR. According to the statement, KKR has implemented similar models in more than 25 companies, which it has acquired since 2011.^[1]

2019: Avast sells RMM business to Barracuda Networks

In early February 2019, Barracuda Networks announced the acquisition of the Managed Workspace family of solutions from Avast Software, as a result of which the buyer entered the market for remote monitoring and management (RMM) software. The financial and other terms of the transaction are not disclosed. More details here.

2017: Thoma Bravo buys Barracuda for $1.5 billion

On September 27, 2017, the sale of Barracuda Networks was announced for $1.5 billion. The company will pass into the hands of private investors, so it will cease to be public.

According to a statement from Barracuda Networks, the company agreed to an offer to acquire Thoma Bravo by the investment fund at a price of $27.55 per share. This is 16.3% more than the quotation rate of the manufacturer of solutions for ensuring information security (IS) as of November 24, 2017. By the close of the exchange on November 27, the value of the company's securities stopped at $27.59.

Barracuda Networks Headquarters

Under the terms of the agreement, Thoma Bravo will pay $1.47 billion from its own funds (without raising borrowed money) for the purchase of Barracuda Networks. It is planned to close the deal by the end of February 2018.

After that, Barracuda Networks, which entered the exchange in 2013, will become a private company and will continue to focus on data protection and email services, the Reuters news agency said.

We believe that the proposed deal provides us with an opportunity to accelerate the company's growth through a leading IB platform created specifically for highly distributed, diverse cloud and hybrid environments, "said BJ Jenkins, CEO and President of Barracuda Networks, commenting on the sale of Thoma Bravo.

An investment bank, Morgan Stanley, has been selected as the financial adviser to Barracuda Networks in the transaction, while Thoma Bravo is advised by Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and UBS.

The purchase of Barracuda Networks is far from Thoma Bravo's first investment in technology companies. Previously, the investment fund spent a total of several billion dollars on the purchase of IT developers such as Qlik Technologies, Riverbed Technology, SolarWinds and Compuware.

2013: Use hidden accounts for customer support

Several security products manufactured by Barracuda Networks, including firewalls, spam filters and VPN devices, have undocumented accounts in the OS. This was announced in his blog in January 2013 by information security specialist Brian Krebs. It is noteworthy that these "hidden" accounts can be accessed remotely from certain IP addresses assigned directly to Barracuda. However, in reality, they can be available (through an SSH connection) for hundreds of other companies - this conclusion was reached by experts from the SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab.

In addition, experts found that using the "product" login, you can easily, without the need to enter a password, access the database MySQL (root @ localhost) of Barracuda devices, which, in turn, will allow a potential attacker to create new accounts on the system with administrator rights. SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab also discovered a file containing a list of accounts and hashed passwords, some of which were easily hacked.

Barracuda has not yet commented on the results of SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab research. However, the company released a security update designed to reduce the number of accounts that can be used for remote configuration to two and make it mandatory to use a public-key cryptographic system. It is noteworthy that this update does not limit remote access to administrator accounts, which does not require the exchange of an encryption key, and also bypasses the problem of the potential use of Barracuda IP addresses by other organizations to access "hidden" accounts in the OS of a number of company products - Barracuda Web Filter, Message Archiver, Web Application Firewall, Link SSL.

According to SEC Consult, Barracuda said these accounts are "important for customer support." According to Vulnerability Lab experts, undocumented accounts have been used by Barracuda as one of the technical support channels since at least 2003.

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