Fergie's Tech Blog

Spammers Most Likely Users Of E-Mail Authentication

Gregg Keizer writes in TechWeb News:

On the eve of an industry summit to discuss how e-mail authentication can stem the flood of spam, one security firm says that spammers are already using the protocols -- to slip their junk mail past filters.

According to Denver-based message security vendor MX Logic, spammers are continuing to adopt Sender ID and Sender Policy Framework (SPF), two of the prominent e-mail authentication schemes that are actually intended to stop spam.

MX Logic tracked a sampling of 17.7 million messages that passed through its servers from June 19 through June 25, and found that of the 9 percent from domains with published SPF records, 84 percent was spam. Of the even smaller number of messages from domains with published Sender ID records (just 0.14 percent), 83 percent were spam.

"Spammers continue to leverage SPF and Sender ID with the intention of making their messages appear more legitimate," said Scott Chasin, MX Logic chief technology officer, in a statement.

posted by Fergie @ 7/11/2005 01:33:00 PM