Early detection of outgoing spammers in large-scale service provider networks

Yehonatan Cohen, Daniel Gordon, Danny Hendler

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

We present ErDOS, an Early Detection scheme for Outgoing Spam. The detection approach implemented by ErDOS combines content-based detection and features based on inter-account communication patterns. We define new account features, based on the ratio between the numbers of sent and received emails and on the distribution of emails received from different accounts. Our empirical evaluation of ErDOS is based on a real-life data-set collected by an email service provider, much larger than data-sets previously used for outgoing-spam detection research. It establishes that ErDOS is able to provide early detection for a significant fraction of the spammers population, that is, it identifies these accounts as spammers before they are detected as such by a content-based detector. Moreover, ErDOS only requires a single day of training data for providing a high-quality list of suspect accounts.

Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationDetection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment - 10th International Conference, DIMVA 2013, Proceedings
Pages83-101
Number of pages19
DOIs
StatePublished - 12 Aug 2013
Event10th Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware and Vulnerability Assessment, DIMVA 2013 - Berlin, Germany
Duration: 18 Jul 201319 Jul 2013

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume7967 LNCS

Conference

Conference10th Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware and Vulnerability Assessment, DIMVA 2013
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityBerlin
Period18/07/1319/07/13

Keywords

  • classification
  • early detection
  • email service provider (ESP)
  • spam

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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