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Virus Bulletin finds spam filters are blocking more spam, but lag behind on phishing

November 2012 by Virus Bulletin

Virus Bulletin, the independent security certification body, has
announced the results of its latest anti-spam comparative
review: 19 solutions achieved a VBSpam award, many of which did
so with an improved spam catch rate, reversing a trend of
declining catch rates seen earlier this year.

The highest catch rates in this month’s test were achieved by
OnlyMyEmail, which missed only one email in the spam feed, and
Libra Esva, both of which missed only one legitimate email. Four
anti-spam solutions - SpamTitan, ESET, Netmail and Halon
Security - managed to avoid false positives altogether, while
also catching more than 99.5 per cent of all spam. They each
earned a VBSpam+ award.

For the first time, the test also included a dedicated feed of
phishing emails, courtesy of Wombat Security. With two
exceptions (SPAMfighter and OnlyMyEmail, which both caught all
the phishing emails), the products’ performance on the phishing
feed was worse than on other spam emails: most products caught
less than 90 per cent of them, with several products putting in
a significantly worse performance than this.

"Usually a lot of effort goes into making phishing emails appear
legitimate," said VB’s Anti-Spam Test Director, Martijn Grooten.
"Add to this the relatively low volume of phishing campaigns
compared with traditional spam campaigns and it becomes somewhat
understandable that spam filters have a harder time blocking
these emails."

Grooten continued: "But those who put their full trust in their
spam filters and as a result fall victim to a phishing email may
be less understanding - and rightly so. Making the mistake of
believing such emails are legitimate could result in financial
loss and/or identity theft - if not directly, then via the
malware served by the links contained in many of today’s
phishing emails. We hope to see some improvement in products’
ability to identify phishing emails in the not-too-distant
future."

The VBSpam quadrant plots products’ spam catch rate against
their false positive rate, with the top right-hand corner the
area products should be aiming for (with maximum spam catch rate
and minimum false positive rate). The front-runners in this test
can clearly be seen from their positions on the quadrant at
http://www.virusbtn.com/vbspam/charts/vbspam-chart-1112-1200.jpg
(journals are permitted to reproduce this chart unedited).

The results of the November 2012 anti-spam comparative review
can be seen at
http://www.virusbtn.com/vbspam/archive/test?id=181


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