29 April 2010

New way to assassinate spam

As MailScanner, the world's most widely-used email security and anti-spam
system prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary on 1 May, its developer
has just launched ScamNailer, a programme designed purely to spot phishing
attacks.

Julian Field, Systems Administrator at the University of Southampton's
School of Electronics and Computer Science first developed MailScanner back
in 2000 and since then it has been used in 226 countries and has become a
world-leading email protection system; supporting more virus scanning
engines than any other with over 1.3 million downloads.

Now, backed by one of the largest corporations on the Internet, Julian has
launched ScamNailer.

The programme, which can be downloaded free, tackles spear phishing, a
technique used by spammers and scammers to try to get an individual's
username and password, so that they can then send out millions of spam
messages from their email address.

ScamNailer has compiled two lists of addresses which are commonly used in
phishing attacks and from these it generates a set of SpamAssassin rules
that detect the presence of these addresses, which can be used in
MailScanner or SpamAssassin to stop the spear-phishing attacks completely.

"The advantage that ScamNailer has over any similar programmes is  that its
backer has provided access to a list of phishing email addresses and
websites much larger than any other available, so when people download the
package, they can block these addresses from their own site, said Julian.

ScamNailer, which can be downloaded free at: http://www.scamnailer.info/ is
attracting an average of three million downloads a month.

ENDS


Notes to Editors

1.For further information about MailScanner, please visit:
http://www.mailscanner.info/

2.For information about Julian Field, please visit:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/about/julian-field.php

3.With around 500 researchers, and 900 undergraduate students, the School
of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton is one of the world's
largest and most successful integrated research groupings, covering
Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electronics, Electrical
Engineering, and IT in Organisations. ECS has unrivalled depth and breadth
of expertise in world-leading research, new developments and their
applications.

4.The University of Southampton is a leading UK teaching and research
institution with a global reputation for research and scholarship across a
wide range of subjects in engineering, science, social sciences, health,
arts and humanities.

With over 22,000 students, around 5000 staff, and an annual turnover of
almost £400 million, the University of Southampton is one of the country'
top institutions for engineering, computer science and medicine. We combine
academic excellence with an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to
research, supporting a culture that engages and challenges students and
staff in their pursuit of learning.

The University is also home to a number of world-leading research centres,
including the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, the Institute of
Sound and Vibration Research, the Optoelectronics Research Centre, the
Centre for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, and the
Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute

For further information contact:

Julian Field, Systems Administrator,
School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton,
Tel: 023 8059 2817, email: jkf@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Hele¨ne Murphy, Media Relations Consultant to the University of Southampton
Tel: 07944 847570, Email: hmurphy@murphycommunications.co.uk