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Automated system tracks down and helps eliminate spam and bot-infected PCs.
London, 12 October, 2006 BT is taking a pioneering role in the global battle against spam by implementing the world’s first fully-automated ‘spam buster’ system to track down and tackle professional spammers and ‘botnet’-infected customers on the BT broadband network.
Around 80 per cent of e-mails on the internet, equivalent to 6.5 billion emails a day, are spam. These unwanted emails are not only generated by professional spammers, but also by ‘botnets’ - where the PCs of unsuspecting customers are secretly infected with rogue software to form a robotic network that generates vast quantities of unwanted spam . These compromised machines can be used in turn to attack other PCs and websites.
The new spam detection system selected by BT – Content Forensics™ from StreamShield Networks – scans millions of e-mails a day, providing BT with detailed reports on the location and size of spam-related problems originating from the BT network. Not only does the StreamShield Networks’ solution save time and resources by automatically identifying spam problems, it can prevent valuable bandwidth being wasted on unwanted spam and virus infected traffic.
BT’s Customer Security team can then take immediate action against professional spam operators, which could include terminating rogue accounts and adding offending IP addresses to industry-wide blacklists.
At the same time, BT can focus more effort on contacting and helping customers rid their PCs of botnet infections – reducing the likelihood of e-mail traffic from BT networks being blocked by other providers and third-party e-mail systems.
“In a world-first, we’re turning the tables on professional spammers and cutting off this scourge of the internet at source”, said Stratis Scleparis, CTO at BT Retail. “We are delighted to work with StreamShield Networks on this innovative approach which both tracks down and reduces spam messages on our network, and at the same time helps our customers overcome the threat of infection by bots.”
“Our Content Forensics solution has been developed with large ISPs such as BT in mind and delivers a powerful solution to the problem of professional spammers and botnets on ISP’s broadband networks”, comments Simon Gawne , CEO StreamShield Networks. “We are excited that BT has selected our solution after extensive testing in their network and we look forward to working with them in the future.”
bot
n [common on IRC, MUD and among gamers; from `robot'] 1.
An IRC or MUD user who is actually a program. On IRC, typically
the robot provides some useful service. Examples are NickServ,
which tries to prevent random users from adopting nicks already
claimed by others, and MsgServ, which allows one to send
asynchronous messages to be delivered when the recipient signs on.
Also common are `annoybots', such as KissServ, which perform no
useful function except to send cute messages to other people.
Service bots are less common on MUDs; but some others, such as the
`Julia' bot active in 1990-91, have been remarkably impressive
Turing-test experiments, able to pass as human for as long as ten or
fifteen minutes of conversation. 2. An AI-controlled player in a
computer game (especially a first-person shooter such as Quake)
which, unlike ordinary monsters, operates like a human-controlled
player, with access to a player's weapons and abilities. An example
can be found at `http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/'.
Note that bots in both senses were `robots' when the term first
appeared in the early 1990s, but the shortened form is now habitual.
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