Enterprise Information Technology Services Press Release
The University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia

Monday, November 12, 2006

WRITER: Bert DeSimone bert@uga.edu, 706-542-5359
CONTACT: Greg Ashley gashley@uga.edu, 706-542-5110

EITS responds to escalating spam wars

ATHENS, Ga.— The numbers are staggering. Over 2,900 emails a minute are sent to users on UGA's campus-wide email system, known as UGAMail. That's approximately 4.2 million messages a day. 2.5 million of these messages are blocked before they are even processed by UGAMail, since they are sent by known spammers. Of the remaining 1.7 million, only about 800,000 are legitimate emails, with the other approximately 900,000 being detected as spam by UGAMail's internal spam filtering system and delivered to junk mail folders owned by individual UGAMail users.

Doing the simple math, four out of five emails are spam, a whopping 80% of all email received at UGA.

Spam, also called Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), has reached "spamdemic" proportions worldwide, and UGA's Enterprise Information Technology Services, who runs UGAMail, is taking measures to stem the tide.

According to an October 27, 2006, article that appeared in Security Focus News, entitled "Bot Nets likely behind jump in spam," estimates are as a high as a 450% increase in spam over the last 8 months. The increase is due in part to the increased use of bot nets, which are networks of compromised PCs, as the originating point for the spam. Instead of single computers sending out spam, spammers are using the resources of thousands of computers to send out millions of spam messages.

"There is not just more spam," said Greg Ashley, Senior Associate CIO for EITS, "the spam is increasingly more difficult to detect by spam filters." Ashley went on to say that spammers are using embedded images and other techniques to get past the spam recognition programs.

So, what are the next steps? The current spam filtering options and techniques are under review, with research into new solutions a large part of the research and review activities.

"The research and review process is on the fast track, and we are currently evaluating two products recommended by the company that developed UGAMail that show promise," said Ashley. "UGA has also assembled a task force of Information Technology professionals to conduct a review of peer and aspirant educational institutions to work with Gartner and other industry professionals to recommend further spam reduction options and tactics."

ugamail.uga.edu

EITS Mission
The Office of the Chief Information Officer and Enterprise Information Technology Services (EITS) are committed to the mission of UGA as a land-and-sea-grant institution where academics come first and the research extensive university community encourages research efforts at the undergraduate and graduate levels. To that end, under the direction of the University´s Chief Information Officer, EITS endeavors to provide a robust, reliable, and secure information technology infrastructure, maintain essential production services, and offer world-class support.