Identifying Usolicited Bulk E-mail Messages with Header Field Comparisons
ABSTRACT
The ever-increasing unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE) flood threatens the resources of individuals and organisations. The usual protection method is filtering out the UBE messages. This paper presents fifteen header field analysis criteria, which were able to distinguish between legitimate and UBE messages in two legitimate and two UBE corpora. Eight of the identified criteria were strong and seven moderate indicators of either a UBE or a legitimate message. These results enable useful additions to existing UBE filtering techniques and pave way for special applications combining header field based indicators to detect UBE messages without analysing the message payload.
AUTHORS
Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Finland
Mikko Voipio is an engineer and IT specialist. His research concerns electronic mail communication and especially the problem of UBE filtering. He is presently a doctoral candidate in Helsinki University of Technology.
Helsinki University of Technology
Finland
Ronja Addams-Moring earned a nurse's degree in 1988. She has worked as an e-communication skills coach since 1989 and since 1994 on and off as a consultant for ICT-related business processes. Ronja has worked for start-up projects, for large companies and within adult and higher education. Since 1998 her main employment has been in academia. She teaches scientific research and writing skills at Helsinki University of Technology and at the Finnish Defence College. Her research interests are in mobile emergency announcements (public warnings sent to mobile phones, pagers and PDAs).
Published In
Journal of Information Warfare
The definitive publication for the best and latest research and analysis on information warfare, information operations, and cyber crime. Available in traditional hard copy or online.
Quick Links
Archive
