Costin Raiu Kaspersky Lab
Spam - past and future
Even if viruses and Trojans are still the holders for the infamous 'most widespread kind of malware' award, last year showed some new trends making their appearance in the security world. Already old, spam is becoming more and more widespread, and accompanied by dialers and IE exploits, is becoming an even greater threat than viruses.
For instance, according to various statistics the average email user is receiving about one infected message every week. On the other hand, the number of spam emails received can be as high as ten per day, of which some can directly open web pages further exploiting various IE bugs to install dialers or spyware.
This paper will take an in-depth look at spam, the most recent techniques used to create 'undetectable' (by AntiSpam software) messages and the technology which is currently used against this increasing threat. Eventually, we'll see what are the most promising future solutions, such as the Bayesian neural networks and analyse their limitations and expected efficiency.
