IronPort Technologies wins the fight against spam

These files are being widely spammed in emails that often contain no subject line or message body.

'The MP3 file spam spoofed itself as a song by using common song titles and musician names as the file name,' according to IronPort Spam Outbreak report. 'When opened, the file plays a recording of a synthesized voice urging listeners to buy shares in an internet penny stock called Exto.' The repot estimates that at its peak, the MP3 Spam Outbreak represented 1% of spam volumes and around 7-10% of all global spam.

Although the format of spam attacks is keep evolving to manipulate and escape anti-spam solutions, IronPort reputation filters and anti-spam technologies succeeded again in stopping MP3 spam before reaching inboxes.

'To combat rapidly evolving spam mails before reaching inboxes, enterprises need a solution that can early detect and block spam outbreaks at time that the cost of spam to the global economy is reaching Dhs92bn ($25bn) per year,' said Sébastien Commérot, IronPort Marketing Manager for the Middle East.

'So far, the combination of IronPort reputation filters and anti-spam technologies are the only answer for a proactive defense against such spam outbreaks. IronPort reputation filters and anti-spam succeeded in blocking PDF, Excel and Storm Trojan spam in addition to the present attack of MP3 spam, an evidence of IronPort leadership role regionally and internationally in providing the best and innovative anti-spam, anti-virus and anti-spyware appliances.'

IronPort's Web Reputation technology does a number of checks on the Web links included in an email and gives the links a score. That number, along with other checks such as sender reputation and content of the email can determine whether an email can pass through or be blocked.

To tackle MP3 spam, IronPort uses its SenderBase Network to assign reputation scores to connecting IPs based on their likelihood to send spam. The SenderBase was aware of the majority of Storm infected PCs and blocked these suspicious senders from sending MP3 Spam proactively.

IronPort has also used its SenderBase Network to see 25% of worldwide email traffic. Within seconds of the start of the outbreak, IronPort received samples and used automated technologies to issue rules based on attributes such as file type, file content and subject line to stop the remaining MP3 Spam.