The State of the Art of Spam and Anti-Spam Strategies and a Possible Solution using Digital Forensics

Electronic communication such as email is an efficient and cost effective communication medium in today’s connected world. This paper looks at the strategies employed by spam and anti-spam and shows the coevolution of these strategies. Anti-spam software makes use of intelligent filtering based on content scanning, block lists, black lists, white lists and mailbox authentication. Spammers have been able to get past anti-spam software by using picture content, mailboxspoofing and anonymous emailing. Spammers use the strategy of creating botnets to send spam. Honeypots, systems employed to gather information on unusual system activity, track and ultimately stop the activities of botnets. The paper looks at honeypots as part of information gathering in a digital forensic process. Digital forensic science has been employed to authenticate email authors and back trace email paths. This paper proposes two strategies for the detection of botnet activity and the tracing of botmasters.