Spammers still finding a way throughPosted 08/09/2004
Spammers are still managing to infiltrate systems designed to identify and stop them, a new survey claims.
The research by mail filtering firm CipherTrust found that spammers are the most enthusiastic users of a system designed to discover whether or not an email comes from the web address given.
The software, called the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), was developed to stop mail senders faking the address in email messages and is proving good at stopping spoofing and phishing attacks.
However, the CipherTrust survey showed that 234 per cent more spam is passing SPF checks than legitimate e-mail.
The SPF system only works if the email concerned does not come from its claimed place of origin. If it does, then SPF systems pass it as legitimate and do not check to see if the net location is owned by known spammers.
"These protocols alone are not effective in identifying spam because spammers are doing what they always have, adapting in order to circumvent measures aimed at stopping spam," said Paul Judge, chief technology officer at CipherTrust.
© 1998-2004 DeHavilland Information Services plc.
|
