Image Based Spam, the Threat Spreads
Image Based Spam, the Threat Spreads
July 25th, 2007: A survey by PineApp of 400 organisations in the UK has found that whilst 97% have anti-spam solutions, half were unable to effectively deal with the growing problem of image based spam.
Earlier in the month IDM reported on the growing threat of image based spam, making it extremely difficult for anti-spam solutions to deal with. This latest survey by network and email security company PineApp, shows that the rise of Image Based Spam is fast approaching plague proportions. Traditional anti-spam technologies such as content-based, Bayesian, Heuristic and URL Filtering struggle to prevent this type of spam on a consistently accurate basis.
Whilst embedding or attaching images such as .gif or .bmp files containing unwanted content in email is not new but it has grown fast and the survey shows that it is “not being dealt with effectively,” says Steve Cornish, director at PineApp.
The problem is becoming increasingly noticeable here in Australia with image based spam fast overtaking the traditional text based emails. One of my own email accounts that I torture by signing up to anything that looks somewhat non-secure is flooded with image based spam, and is actually starting to outnumber the text based spam.
According to the survey 48% or respondents said bandwidth is a real resource problem while 37% said that the amount of storage taken up by image spam is a major concern.