Brace yourself for spam hell

After the revelation that some spam filters may be rendered useless by a new spamming method hasty changes are being made to systems in preparation for a rise in unwanted mail.

"At the moment the problem is still small," said Scott Hazen Mueller, chairman of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (Cauce). "I work for a large university and I'm already in the process of future-proofing my systems. This is going to be a big thing in a few months."

According to Mueller the new spamming technique (detailed by SC online yesterday) will herald a rise in spam as soon as enough computers are infected with trojans that send spam email via ISPs.

Paul Wood, chief information security analyst at secure messaging company Messagelabs, suggested that one way to combat the problem is by content filtering rather than usual filtering techniques.

"It is more difficult to block emails sent in this way. If you're looking at content it will make a difference," he said.

www.messagelabs.com
www.cauce.org