TC: Small: Understanding the Roots of the Spam Problem -- Email Address Trafficking

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH

Investigators

Abstract

Existing anti-spam techniques, such as spam filters and reputation systems, face growing difficulties due to spammers' use of multimedia content (which is hard to filter) and botnets (which mask true spammer identity and thus handicap reputation systems). Te goal of this project is to complement these existing efforts by targeting email address distribution channels, where lists of addresses are bought and sold among unscrupulous parties. As a first necessary step, this project?s goal is to better understand the email trafficking phenomenon. This is a unique opportunity to study email spam in conjunction with email address trafficking. The team recently built a system for Internet users that, as a side effect, is able to collect the data that would contain information necessary for this analysis. Second, they secured cooperation from the Case Western Reserve University IT organization to test-deploy this system for up to 500 users and keep it in place for at least a year, which would allow them to collect a trove of data for a large-scale study and analysis. This proposal will study spam from a unique perspective ? email address trafficking. While previous studies characterize spam by considering email content and senders, address trafficking represents an important aspect of the spam problem, and better understanding of address trafficking can open new effective ways to combat spam. The broader impact includes its potential for better mechanisms to combat spam, for fostering collaboration with data mining faculty within the department, and for enhancing graduate and undergraduate education by adding material on application-level network security to, respectively ?Internet Applications? graduate course and to the ?Computer Networks? core undergraduate course.