DENVER July 11, 2005 MX Logic, Inc., a leading provider of innovative email defense solutions that ensure email protection and security for businesses, service providers, government organizations, resellers and their customers, today released its latest data on corporate email security. Among the key findings, the company reported that spammers continue to adopt Sender ID and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) email authentication protocols intended to help stop fraudulent email.
In a sample of more than 17.7 million unique email messages that passed through the MX Logic® Threat Center from June 19 through June 25, 2005, MX Logic found that:
9 percent were from domains that had published an SPF record, 84 percent of which were spam sending domains; and,
0.14 percent were from domains that had published a Sender ID record, 83 percent of which were spam sending domains.
Email authentication protocols including SPF, Sender ID, Domain Keys Internet Mail (DKIM) and others are intended to help verify the origins of email at the domain level, making it more difficult for spammers and phishers to stay in business.
"Spammers continue to leverage SPF and Sender ID with the intention of making their messages appear more legitimate and to possibly avoid having their messages delivered with an onscreen notification that a Sender ID record was not found, a method Microsoft recently announced it will use on Hotmail," said Scott Chasin, chief technology officer, MX Logic. "The strength of these protocols is further compromised by the fact that many legitimate senders have yet to adopt either Sender ID or SPF."
Chasin also noted that industry trials of both SPF and Sender ID have raised concerns about the protocols' effectiveness when email messages are forwarded or resent and in their ability to stop forgery of the most common user-visible mail headers. He pointed to a technical paper published by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, of which MX Logic is a member, which contains the results of more than six months of evaluation of SPF and Sender ID email authentication protocols.
"While we applaud industry efforts to develop email authentication protocols, no domain authentication protocol can guarantee that a message you receive really does come from who you think it comes from," said Chasin. "Additionally, for any domain-based email authentication protocol to be effective, it would have to be embraced by a critical mass of domain name holders. Imposing one protocol without mass adoption could result in the unfair treatment of a large number of senders of legitimate email."
In addition to data related to email authentication, MX Logic also issued the following findings:
