Barracuda wants to buy Sourcefire

Antispam appliance vendor Barracuda has revealed that it made a $186 million offer for Sourcefire. This is 13 percent more than the company's current stock price, though half of what it was worth a year ago. Founded by the creator of the well-known SNORT intrusion detection and prevention software, Sourcefire also owns the ClamAV open source antivirus project, which it acquired in August last year.

Barracuda leverages on ClamAV in its appliance products and it is not known if the offer is a direct result of the looming threat of litigation from competitor Trend Micro, which claims that ClamAV violates a patent it holds. In an open letter, Barracuda did note that it is "uniquely positioned to address and remedy" this situation.

For more on Barracuda's offer:
- check out this Network World article