VBSpam Email Security Comparative Review September 2020

Ionuţ Răileanu

Virus Bulletin

Copyright © 2020 Virus Bulletin


 

Introduction

In this test – which forms part of Virus Bulletin’s continuously running security product test suite – six full email security solutions, one custom configured solution1 and four blacklists of various kinds elected to be publicly tested, the results for which are included in this report.

The results detailed in the VBSpam test reports generally indicate that email security products do a good job of blocking the majority of spam emails. However, in this report we will focus on those emails that, through attachments or URLs, lead directly to a malicious action, and highlight the particular emails that managed to evade most of the security products filters in our test. Since the emails used in the test cover the threats that exist at the moment when it is run, we are able to determine how the security solutions are performing against up-to-date spam campaigns.

For some additional background to this report, the table and map below show the geographical distribution (based on sender IP address) of the spam emails seen in the test. (Note: these statistics are relevant only to the spam samples we received in real time.)

# Sender’s IP country Percentage of spam
1 China 18.50%
2 Japan 16.30%
3 United States 14.83%
4 Russian Federation 6.19%
5 Brazil 3.70%
6 Vietnam 3.01%
7 India 2.63%
8 Ukraine 2.24%
9 Indonesia 1.90%
10 Turkey 1.39%

Top 10 countries from which spam was sent.

 figure1-map.png

Geographical distribution of spam based on sender IP address.

 

Challenging emails

The spam campaign that the products in this test found the most challenging to block was one that sent stock exchange-related emails. The emails didn’t contain any attachments or URLs and were sent from free email service accounts (mail[.]ru, gmx[.]net and gmx[.]com). The campaign was active on 17 August from 12:13 to 12:48 GMT and then again for a short time the next day, 18 August, around 12:50 GMT.

Axway was the only product that managed to block all the emails from this campaign.

Fig2-sample from rdar.pngSample from the RDAR spam campaign.
We continue to see extortion emails in the spam feeds, but it looks like, despite all the evasive techniques used to bypass the filters of the security products, this kind of spam is reaching inboxes less. However, we mention here a sample that was missed by most of the products in the test (the products that blocked it were: Axway, IBM, Libraesva, ZEROSPAM, and the partial solutions Abusix Mail Intelligence, IBM X-Force IP and IBM X-Force Combined).

fig3-exampleofextortion.pngExample of an extortion spam.

 

Malware and phishing

In the following sections we present some of malware and phishing emails that proved the most challenging for the products we saw in the test.2

1. Password-protected archives containing malicious ‘.doc’ files

Subjects:

  • Re: (no subject)
  • Re: Alarm

Attachments:

  • request.zip: 329e45d95f39e6e68f7659bf4947649f971489c3257bfb2b136f59323d862fed, which contained report,08.20.doc: 979f10f83dcf1e9a9aad6e30f42ac6d84d9c329e0f08b3232ca04366aae23072
  • Request.zip: 0062169d2871199582141e20b6eb0d371f4d0bc304bd6d1347ebe5cae4b06820, which contained report,08.20.doc: 6d93346bea6220274108bfe72decb671687c80d53c434e74fe03c106379fb81c

MAIL FROM:

Dates of occurrence and number of products that correctly blocked it:

  • 20 August 12:04 GMT; two products: Libraesva and ZEROSPAM.
  • 20 August 13:02 GMT; four products: IBM, Fortinet, Libraesva and ZEROSPAM)

Malware features:

  • Because the attached archive is password protected it is a challenge for anti-spam solutions to block the emails at first sight.
  • It has been reported3 that this campaign was pushing IcedID to English-speaking recipients.

fig4-capture-of-email.png

A capture of the email.

fig5-attached-doc-file.pngThe attached .doc file, captured when opening the archive in the app.any.run sandbox.

 

2. Fattura n.XXXXX del 05/17/2020

Subjects:

  • Fattura n.[0-9]{5} del 05/17/2020

Attachments:

  • fattura_174.xls: 768fb3244d426ccdd043fc5f72276f69494b50d20f49477f039c9911d878a3cb
  • fattura_4423.xlsm: f1cf9543cc45d69177dac3b26015955c0d6c34295fd688df501eea9a11b85e92
  • fattura_1194.xls: caac5b35adcf5efeacec8f82357f7e25d0f7cb0f73c4354ddccfff52f881ee7b
  • fattura_489.xls: 5e145ca74870d3db2317eb6fc46371ef388054dfffc8d138b06da1ac6c6e9fe7
  • Fattura_960.xls: 5f5c86843bea1ebfa1cd7de5140b78f6023785d98d05a27f45b91ef200adc21b

MAIL FROM:

Dates of occurrence and number of products that correctly blocked it:

  • There were 20 emails in approximately 15 minutes (09:25:20 to 09:38:45 on 13 August). Only those with the [email protected] MAIL FROM seem to have bypassed the filters of all the solutions in the test, with the exception of Fortinet, IBM and Libraesva.

Malware features:

  • A geographically targeted spam campaign, active for a few minutes, containing password-protected ‘.xls’ files.
  • Based on our research, it looks like this is a Gootkit campaign.

fig6-italian-campaign.png

A capture of the malware campaign in Italian.

 

3. Emotet

Subjects:

  • Eintragung
  • First names (e.g. Brylee, Magdalena, Meike, Bianca)

Attachments:

  • ANHANG-2020-08- 13-155100838.doc: c30a4592cd8e7e2a97b2ee19d0061553ccbd7cd1b7e2af8bca2dd6913a1bccb5
  • Form - Aug 13, 2020.doc: ba510b5a0f97430a09efbd12acbb4c1be869e71e678adf5fa0b5498fb477068e
  • PO# 08152020Ex.doc: 72af635d51194d2ab428924c2c7f51aa4a9d040e93566ed7302ed43f5fa16eed
  • Electronic form.doc: 62f25d164ef59be5ad282fad344656d63ae755643c7be3b729899b31c97b0925

MAIL FROM:

Dates of occurrence and number of products that correctly blocked it:

  • We saw Emotet spam emails on every day of the test apart from at the weekends.
  • The only products that didn’t miss any of the emails from this campaign were IBM, Libraesva and Spamhaus DQS.

fig7-common-spam-emotet.pngThe most common version seen in the test of spam containing Emotet.
fig8-different-emotet.pngA different version of the Emotet spam from the test.

4. Phishing that uses public legitimate Google services as a proxy

Subjects:

  • Action required for recipient email address
  • Notification: Re-activate Your Email Account.
  • Delivery Attempted - back to sender
  • Delayed invoice detailsfororder452062

MAIL FROM:

Dates of occurrence and number of products that correctly blocked it:

  • 11 August; three products: Axway, IBM and Libraesva.
  • 9 August; four products: Axway, Bitdefender, Libraesva and ZEROSPAM.
  • 10 August; two products: Libraesva and ZEROSPAM.
  • 20 August; four products: Fortinet, IBM, Libraesva and ZEROSPAM.

Malware features:

  • We couldn’t track the malicious behaviour further, since the URLs were either no longer accessible or had been blocked by Google for violating the service’s terms and conditions.
  • These phishing emails were the most challenging for the products in our test.

fig9-phishing-missed-by-most.png

This phishing email was missed by the most products.
fig10-phshing-redirecting.pngPhishing email redirecting the landing page through Google browser.

Fig11-phishing-using-google-drive.pngPhishing email making use of the Google Drive service.
Fig12-phishing-using-google-drive-2.pngAnother example of a phishing email making use of the Google Drive service.

5. PayPal phishing with shortened URL

Subjects:

  • [ PayPal-Support ] : PayPal Account Limited 8/13/2020 2:52:16 AM

Malicious URL:

  • hxxps://cutt[.]ly/rd2PDlt

MAIL FROM:

Dates of occurrence and number of products that correctly blocked it:

  • 13 August; four products: Bitdefender, Libraesva, Spamhaus DQS and ZEROSPAM.

Malware features:

  • We couldn’t track the malicious behaviour further, since the URL is no longer accessible.

fig13-paypal-phishing.pngCapture of the PayPal phishing email.

 

Results

Spam catch rates continued to be high, with the majority of products blocking more than 99% of the spam, but the catch rates on malware and phishing were significantly lower. Of the participating full solutions, two achieved a VBSpam award: Libraesva and ZEROSPAM, while four performed well enough to achieve a VBSpam+ award: Axway, Bitdefender, Fortinet and IBM Lotus Protector. The Spamhaus DQS custom configured solution also achieved a VBSpam award.

 

Axway MailGate 5.6

SC rate: 99.71%
FP rate: 0.00%
Final score: 99.68
Malware catch rate: 91.79%
Phishing catch rate: 96.88%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 99.90%
Abusix SC rate: 99.64%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.7%
Speed:

10% GREEN 50% GREEN 95% GREEN 98% GREEN

vbspam-plus-0920.jpg

 

Bitdefender Security for Mail Servers 3.1.7

SC rate: 99.88%
FP rate: 0.00%
Final score: 99.88
Malware catch rate: 96.54%
Phishing catch rate: 97.64%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 99.99%
Abusix SC rate: 99.84%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%
Speed:

10% GREEN 50% GREEN 95% GREEN 98% GREEN

vbspam-plus-0920.jpg

 

Fortinet FortiMail

SC rate: 99.71%
FP rate: 0.00%
Final score: 99.71
Malware catch rate: 94.71%
Phishing catch rate: 93.01%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 99.99%
Abusix SC rate: 99.61%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%
Speed:

10% GREEN 50% GREEN 95% GREEN 98% GREEN

vbspam-plus-0920.jpg

 

IBM Lotus Protector for Mail Security

SC rate: 99.78%
FP rate: 0.00%
Final score: 99.78
Malware catch rate: 97.62%
Phishing catch rate: 97.54%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 99.95%
Abusix SC rate: 99.72%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%
Speed:

10% GREEN 50% GREEN 95% GREEN 98% GREEN

vbspam-plus-0920.jpg

 

Libraesva ESG v.4.7

SC rate: 99.94%
FP rate: 0.02%
Final score: 99.84
Malware catch rate: 99.89%
Phishing catch rate: 99.43%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 99.99%
Abusix SC rate: 99.93%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%
Speed:

10% GREEN 50% GREEN 95% speed-colour-blobs-ORANGE.jpg 98% speed-colour-blobs-ORANGE.jpg

vbspam-verified-0920.jpg

 

Spamhaus Data Query Service

SC rate: 98.72%
FP rate: 0.00%
Final score: 98.72
Malware catch rate: 96.87%
Phishing catch rate: 83.85%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 99.58%
Abusix SC rate: 98.42%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%
Speed:

10% GREEN 50% GREEN 95% GREEN 98% GREEN

vbspam-verified-0920.jpg

 

ZEROSPAM

SC rate: 99.69%
FP rate: 0.06%
Final score: 99.35
Malware catch rate: 92.87%
Phishing catch rate: 99.34%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 99.98%
Abusix SC rate: 99.59%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.7%
Speed:

10% GREEN 50% GREEN 95% GREEN 98% GREEN

vbspam-verified-0920.jpg

 

Abusix Mail Intelligence

SC rate: 99.25%
FP rate: 0.06%
Final score: 98.94
Malware catch rate: 71.17%
Phishing catch rate: 94.90%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 98.61%
Abusix SC rate: 99.47%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%

 

IBM X-Force Combined

SC rate: 96.05%
FP rate: 0.00%
Final score: 96.05
Malware catch rate: 75.70%
Phishing catch rate: 82.34%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 99.13%
Abusix SC rate: 95.00%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%

 

IBM X-Force IP

SC rate: 93.54%
FP rate: 0.00%
Final score: 93.54
Malware catch rate: 66.85%
Phishing catch rate: 78.00%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 98.61%
Abusix SC rate: 91.80%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%

 

IBM X-Force URL

SC rate: 67.06%
FP rate: 0.00%
Final score: 67.06
Malware catch rate: 18.36%
Phishing catch rate: 24.36%
Project Honey Pot SC rate: 92.81%
Abusix SC rate: 58.26%
Newsletters FP rate: 0.0%

 

Results tables

  True negatives False positives FP rate False negatives True positives SC rate Final score VBSpam
Axway 4686 0 0.00% 366 124209.8 99.71% 99.68 vbantispam-plus.gif
Bitdefender 4686 0 0.00% 152 124423.8 99.88% 99.88 vbantispam-plus.gif
FortiMail 4686 0 0.00% 362.6 124213.2 99.71% 99.71 vbantispam-plus.gif
IBM 4686 0 0.00% 278.8 124297 99.78% 99.78 vbantispam-plus.gif
Libraesva 4685 1 0.02% 70.4 124505.4 99.94% 99.84 vbantispam-pass.gif
Spamhaus DQS 4686 0 0.00% 1600.4 122975.4 98.72% 98.72 vbantispam-pass.gif
ZEROSPAM 4683 3 0.06% 388.2 124178.6 99.69% 99.35 vbantispam-pass.gif
Abusix Mail Intelligence* 4683 3 0.06% 929.2 123646.6 99.25% 99.84 N/A
IBM X-Force Combined* 4686 0 0.00% 4922.2 119653.6 96.05% 96.05 N/A
IBM X-Force IP* 4686 0 0.00% 8051 116524.8 93.54% 93.54 N/A
IBM BL - URL* 4686 0 0.00% 41029.2 83546.6 67.06% 67.06 N/A

*These products are partial solutions and their performance should not be compared with that of other products.
(Please refer to the text for full product names and details.)

 

  Newsletters Malware Phishing Project Honey Pot Abusix STDev†
False positives FP rate False negatives SC rate False negatives SC rate False negatives SC rate False negatives SC rate
Axway 1 0.72% 76 91.79% 33 96.88% 32 99.90% 334 99.64% 1.16
Bitdefender 0 0.00% 32 96.54% 25 97.64% 2 99.99% 150 99.84% 0.26
FortiMail 0 0.00% 49 94.71% 74 93.01% 3.2 99.99% 359.4 99.61% 0.58
IBM 0 0.00% 22 97.62% 26 97.54% 14.4 99.95% 264.4 99.72% 0.66
Libraesva 0 0.00% 1 99.89% 6 99.43% 3 99.99% 67.4 99.93% 0.59
Spamhaus DQS 0 0.00% 29 96.87% 171 83.85% 134 99.58% 1466.4 98.42% 1.96
ZEROSPAM 1 0.72% 66 92.87% 7 99.34% 7 99.98% 381.2 99.59% 0.93
Abusix Mail Intelligence* 0 0.00% 267 71.17% 54 94.90% 440.6 98.61% 488.6 99.47% 1.03
IBM X-Force Combined* 0 0.00% 225 75.70% 187 82.34% 276.8 99.13% 4645.4 95.00% 3.68
IBM X-Force IP* 0 0.00% 307 66.85% 233 78.00% 441.4 98.61% 7609.6 91.80% 4.26
IBM BL - URL* 0 0.00% 756 18.36% 801 24.36% 2284.6 92.81% 38744.6 58.26% 11.06

*These products are partial solutions and their performance should not be compared with that of other products. None of the queries to the IP blacklists included any information on the attachments; hence their performance on the malware corpus is added purely for information.
† The standard deviation of a product is calculated using the set of its hourly spam catch rates.
(Please refer to the text for full product names and details.)

  Speed
10% 50% 95% 98%
Axway speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg
Bitdefender speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg
FortiMail speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg
IBM speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg
Libraesva speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-ORANGE.jpg speed-colour-blobs-ORANGE.jpg
Spamhaus DQS speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg
ZEROSPAM speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg

(Please refer to the text for full product names and details.)

speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg 0-30 seconds speed-colour-blobs-YELLOW.jpg 30 seconds to two minutes speed-colour-blobs-ORANGE.jpg two minutes to 10 minutes speed-colour-blobs-RED.jpg more than 10 minutes

 

Products ranked by final score
Bitdefender 99.88
Libraesva 99.84
IBM 99.78
FortiMail 99.71
Axway 99.68
ZEROSPAM 99.35
Spamhaus DQS 98.72

(Please refer to the text for full product names and details.)

 

Hosted solutions Anti-malware IPv6 DKIM SPF DMARC Multiple MX-records Multiple locations
ZEROSPAM ClamAV  

(Please refer to the text for full product names and details.)

 

Local solutions Anti-malware IPv6 DKIM SPF DMARC Interface
CLI GUI Web GUI API
Axway Kaspersky, McAfee        
Bitdefender Bitdefender        
FortiMail Fortinet  
IBM Sophos; IBM Remote Malware Detection          
Libraesva ClamAV; others optional        
Spamhaus DQS Optional        

(Please refer to the text for full product names and details.)

 

VBSpam-quadrant-Sept2020.jpg(Please refer to the text for full product names and details.)

 

Appendix: set-up, methodology and email corpora

The full VBSpam test methodology can be found at https://www.virusbulletin.com/testing/vbspam/vbspam-methodology/vbspam-methodology-ver20.

The test ran for 16 days, from 12am on 8 August to 12am on 24 August 2020.

The test corpus consisted of 129,515 emails. 124,691 of these were spam, 31,775 of which were provided by Project Honey Pot, with the remaining 92,916 spam emails provided by Abusix. There were 4,686 legitimate emails (‘ham’) and 138 newsletters, a category that includes various kinds of commercial and non-commercial opt-in mailings.

144 emails in the spam corpus were considered ‘unwanted’ (see the June 2018 report4) and were included with a weight of 0.2; this explains the non-integer numbers in some of the tables.

Moreover, 926 emails from the spam corpus were found to contain a malicious attachment while 1,059 contained a link to a phishing or malware site; though we report separate performance metrics on these corpora, it should be noted that these emails were also counted as part of the spam corpus.

Emails were sent to the products in real time and in parallel. Though products received the email from a fixed IP address, all products had been set up to read the original sender’s IP address as well as the EHLO/HELO domain sent during the SMTP transaction, either from the email headers or through an optional XCLIENT SMTP command5.

For those products running in our lab, we all ran them as virtual machines on a VMware ESXi cluster. As different products have different hardware requirements – not to mention those running on their own hardware, or those running in the cloud – there is little point comparing the memory, processing power or hardware the products were provided with; we followed the developers’ requirements and note that the amount of email we receive is representative of that received by a small organization.

Although we stress that different customers have different needs and priorities, and thus different preferences when it comes to the ideal ratio of false positives to false negatives, we created a one-dimensional 'final score' to compare products. This is defined as the spam catch (SC) rate minus five times the weighted false positive (WFP) rate. The WFP rate is defined as the false positive rate of the ham and newsletter corpora taken together, with emails from the latter corpus having a weight of 0.2:

WFP rate = (#false positives + 0.2 * min(#newsletter false positives , 0.2 * #newsletters)) / (#ham + 0.2 * #newsletters)

while in the spam catch rate (SC), emails considered ‘unwanted’ (see above) are included with a weight of 0.2.

The final score is then defined as:

Final score = SC - (5 x WFP)

In addition, for each product, we measure how long it takes to deliver emails from the ham corpus (excluding false positives) and, after ordering these emails by this time, we colour-code the emails at the 10th, 50th, 95th and 98th percentiles:

speed-colour-blobs-GREEN.jpg (green) = up to 30 seconds
YELLOW (yellow) = 30 seconds to two minutes
speed-colour-blobs-ORANGE.jpg (orange) = two to ten minutes
speed-colour-blobs-RED.jpg (red) = more than ten minutes

 

Products earn VBSpam certification if the value of the final score is at least 98 and the ‘delivery speed colours’ at 10 and 50 per cent are green or yellow and that at 95 per cent is green, yellow or orange.

Meanwhile, products that combine a spam catch rate of 99.5% or higher with a lack of false positives, no more than 2.5% false positives among the newsletters and ‘delivery speed colours’ of green at 10 and 50 per cent and green or yellow at 95 and 98 per cent earn a VBSpam+ award.

 

Footnotes

1  Spamhaus DQS is a custom solution built on top of the SpamAssassin open-source anti-spam platform.

2 This analysis is not intended to be exhaustive research on these samples but rather a short review of the most commonly missed malware and phishing emails in the test.

3 https://twitter.com/malware_traffic/status/1296480451301912577.

4 https://www.virusbulletin.com/virusbulletin/2018/06/vbspam-comparative-review.

5 http://www.postfix.org/XCLIENT_README.html

Download PDF

twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest reviews:

VBSpam comparative review

The Q1 2024 VBSpam test measured the performance of nine full email security solutions, one custom configured solution and one open‑source solution.

VBSpam comparative review

The Q4 2023 VBSpam test measured the performance of eight full email security solutions, one custom configured solution, one open-source solution and one blocklist.

VBSpam comparative review

In the Q3 2023 VBSpam test we measured the performance of eight full email security solutions, one custom configured solution, one open-source solution and one blocklist.

VBSpam comparative review

In the Q2 2023 VBSpam test we measured the performance of nine full email security solutions, one custom configured solution, one open-source solution and one blocklist.

VBSpam comparative review

In the Q1 2023 VBSpam test we measured the performance of eight full email security solutions, one custom configured solution, one open-source solution and one blocklist.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.