New Ways of Combating Spam
by Gary B. Smith
Alarm bells are ringing in the Internet community; concern about spam and the affect spam is having on the Internet has reached critical proportions. The general concern about combating the increase in e-mail abuse can be seen in the outpouring of articles on the subject on the Internet. The involvement of major players such as AOL and Microsoft and various professional working groups are also indicative of the growing seriousness of the spam concerns.
Why should there be such a furor about a few spam messages that appear in your e-mail inbox? Some claim that spam is to be expected and is a natural consequence of the open environment of the Internet and cannot be avoided. However, spam can no longer be categorized as a mere "side affect" that obstructs the flow of information over the Internet. Spam affects even the most ordinary of 'Net-users;' including those who visit sites that require them to register or fill-in forms, and find that the flow of spam to their mailboxes increases on a daily basis.
The increase in spam can better be described as an avalanche - and this is by no means an exaggerated estimation. Recently AOL blocked a billion e-mails in 24 hours. Most of these were offering inducements about mortgages and penis enlargements. AOL reports that about ten percent of the messages originated from Microsoft's hotmail service. AOL blocks an average of 28 junk e-mails per e-mail account daily. The frightening part is that predictions made last year by many pundits that more than eighty percent of received e-mail would be spam, is coming true.
The cost of spam to businesses is also becoming a serious problem, particularly in the corporate sectors where it is definitely starting to take the shine off e-mail as an effective business tool. Presently, it is estimated that about 40 percent of all e-mail traffic in the US is made up of spam. This is an increase of eight percent on the figure for the second half of 2002. Researchers expect that this figure will be closer to fifty percent by the end of 2003. The problem for business is that many rely on e-mail as a legitimate medium to promote their products and reach clients. The proliferation of spam has resulted in a "degradation of the medium." In other words, the value and trust in e-mail as an effective business tool has been put into question by the overflow of unsolicited spam, resulting in a threat to the very existence of e-mail as a communication and marketing tool on the Internet.
The seriousness of this threat has been recognized by major Internet companies and even by national governments. The French government recently voted to ban unsolicited e-mail sales messages. The proposed amendments to the law in France are specifically aimed at "increasing confidence in the digital economy." Many other countries are also considering similar legislation, even in the face of intense debate about Internet privacy.
While Internet privacy is still a contentious topic, with most users strongly opposed to any sort of Internet restrictions, the latest Harris Poll indicates that most users would be more than happy to see legislation when it comes to spam. The annoyance level is definitely up, with 80 percent of those interviewed stating that they were "very annoyed" by spam mail, compared to forty-nine percent of respondents two years ago. More than 74 percent of the respondents to the poll were for banning spam. This is a direct reflection of the critical situation, with the increase in spam being compounded every day. Recently Brightwell, an e-mail filtering company, revealed some interesting figures. The number of spam attacks recorded by this company increased from about two million in 2001, to nearly six million in 2002.
Not only does spam incur costs for businesses and ISPs - an estimated $500-million to US and European service providers (Associated Press) - it also has other ramifications, including reductions in staff productivity, amongst others. Another equally worrying side effect of spam is the increased danger from viruses and scams. The Famous "Nigerian Scam" or 419 (home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/) was the fastest growing threat of its type last year, and is still claiming victims.
Fighting back
One of the obvious ways of fighting spam mail is to develop more sophisticated e-mail filters to weed out incoming junk. This has been an important priority for main players such as Microsoft's Outlook and also with Apples' mail application. However, fighting spam is not this easy for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons why filtering is not the ideal weapon against spam is that it can also result in a number of " false positives," or the deletion of legitimate e-mail that may be targeted incorrectly by the filtering methods.
The difficulty in fighting spam is related to the ease at which spam marketing operates on the Internet. E-mail marketing is seen as a comparatively easy way to reach millions of potential customers. For around $100 one can purchase a CDROM on the Web that outlines the way to use Spam with ease. For about the same price one can purchase lists of e-mails of potential clients. Spammers have become more and more ingenuous in their methods and many use bandwidth and resources from insecure mail servers. Servers based in Asia are particularly targeted by spammers. This has even resulted in a diplomatic issue as some ISPs are blocking traffic from Internet addresses designated for China and various Asian countries.
Spammers mask or hide their origins by hacking into Internet cable lines and sending out their e-mail messages though the customer's IP or Internet Protocol address. The difficulty in tracing temporary IP addresses makes finding the spammers very tricky. Another technique used by the spammers is to forge e-mail headers; this is a method known as spoofing which creates the impression that the e-mail is being sent from a legitimate source - once again making prevention through filtering very difficult. Spammers have even used credentials such as the Bank of America and eBay to mask their missives. Spammer's methods are increasing in sophistication and now include polymorphic spam that alters to avoid static filters.
Filtering e-mails and attachments not only presents the problem of producing false positives, but spammers also create their message in a graphic format and by so doing avoid filtering detection. False positives also mean that companies can loose potential clients when their e-mail is deleted or mistakenly filtered as spam. An example of genuine messages being interpreted as spam is the recent case of Microsoft's CRM software. This top of the range customer relationship management software inserts a mixture of characters into the subject line of e-mail sent through the application system. Known as a generated unique identifier (GUID), this string of characters results in the e-mail sent to customer being interpreted as illegal by spam filters.
PART TWO: New Anti-Spam Software
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