Spamcraft: An Inside Look At Spam Campaign Orchestration

Over the last decade, unsolicited bulk email—spam— has evolved dramatically in its volume, its delivery infrastructure and its content. Multiple reports indicate that more than 90% of all email traversing the Internet today is considered spam. This growth is partially driven by a multi-billion dollar anti-spam industry whose dedication to filtering spam in turn requires spammers to recruit botnets to send ever greater volumes to maintain profits. While we all bear witness to this evolution via the contents of our inboxes, far less is understood about the spammer’s viewpoint. In particular, for each spam campaign, spammers must gather and target a particular set of recipients, construct enticing message content, ensure sufficient IP address diversity to evade blacklists, and maintain sufficient content diversity to evade spam filters.