The industry is learning more and more about tricks used by spammers to get their unwanted messages across, as evidenced by
a handful of research studies made public this month from university and vendor labs. But even as their tricks are revealed,
spammers continue to stay a step ahead of the filters, techniques and services designed to catch them.
Findings about how spammers take advantage of Internet protocols to hide their tracks, mine free Web hosting sites to make
extra money, and pump up stock prices to then dump shares at a profit are just some of the research reports that have surfaced.
While some of these reports promise to feed their findings into future product developments or to help strengthen Internet
protocols against misuse, by the time the information is implemented spammers will no doubt have found a new set of tricks.
Meanwhile, IT managers see no relief in sight. In a recent report, IDC says spam has climbed back up the priority list of
IT managers and holds the No. 3 spot among the greatest threats to enterprise security.
Yet when fighting this sort of arms race with spammers who have financial incentives to jump through myriad technical and
social-engineering hoops to get their message through, security vendors are bound to be playing catch-up, says one IT manager.
"It's the nature of the beast," says April Robinson, network administrator with engineering firm Bernardin, Lochmueller &
Associates in Evansville, Ind. "Trying to keep up with 'what in the world will they think of next?' means there will always
be that gap" between spammers' tricks and technology that attempts to foil them, she says.
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