Spammers Develop New Ways to Evade Traditional Anti-Spam
Sunnyvale, CA, April 18, 2007 – Commtouch® (NASDAQ: CTCH), today released its Spam Trends Report for the first quarter of 2007. Spam continues unabated, according to real-time analysis of billions of messages globally each week. Continuing trends include:
“Massive botnets continue to be the force behind most global spam,” points out Amir Lev, Commtouch President and CTO. “Solutions that attempt to detect spam by scanning individual messages for content are inundated by the spam floods the botnets are generating. Effective protection against spam requires dynamic blocking at the network perimeter based on the reputation of the sender.”
Spammers unveiled a new email tactic in the first months of the new year – hijacked newsletter spam. This type of spam aims to evade anti-spam filters by disguising itself as a legitimate form of mass distributed message – email newsletters. Spammers essentially commandeer a popular email newsletter and insert their spam image at the beginning of the message. This trick gets the malevolent message past many anti-spam solutions by cloaking itself as legitimate email newsletter. URL blockers, Bayesian filters, and image-analysis technologies have been blindsided by this new technique of hiding spam within a real email newsletter.
“Hijacked newsletter spam is yet another technique developed to evade traditional anti-spam solutions,” points out Lev. “Fighting spam on a trick-per-trick basis is futile. The spammer innovation cycle is so fast and sophisticated, that as soon as traditional anti-spam solutions come up with a way to block the latest trick, the spammers have already thought of something new.”
More details, including samples of hijacked newsletter spam, are available in Commtouch’s Q1 2007 Spam Trends, available from Commtouch Labs at: http://www.commtouch.com/documents/Commtouch_2007_Q1_Spam_Trends.pdf.
Commtouch Recurrent Pattern Detection Technology Fights the Spam Wars
Commtouch’s Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD) technology protects against spam and virus attacks in real-time as they are mass-distributed over the Internet. The unique content-agnostic technology detects and blocks spam in any language and is highly effective against image-based spam. Commtouch’s Reputation Service dynamically blocks spam at the network perimeter based on the reputation of the sender.
Commtouch Software Ltd. (Nasdaq: CTCH) is dedicated to protecting and preserving the integrity of the world's most important communications tool -- email. Commtouch has over 16 years of experience developing messaging software and is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam, Zero-Hour virus protection and Reputation Service solutions. Using core technologies including RPD™ (Recurrent Pattern Detection), the Commtouch Detection Center analyzes billions of email messages per month to identify new spam and malware outbreaks within minutes of their introduction into the Internet. Integrated by scores of OEM partners, Commtouch technology protects thousands of organizations, with over 50 million users in over 100 countries. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel, and has a subsidiary in Sunnyvale, CA. For more information, see: www.commtouch.com, including the Commtouch online lab detailing spam statistics and charts.
Contact:
Rebecca Steinberg Herson
rebeccah@commtouch.com
US: 650-864-2112
Int'l: +972-9-863-6877
