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Explore the arms race between spammers and anti-spammers, the impact on email credibility, and the need for immune sending protocols. Learn how immune protocols can reduce spam and enhance email trust using law-based mechanisms. Discover the potential of Distributed TCB for secure and scalable email governance. Find insights on deploying and benefiting from TSR-based email systems for spam control. Seeking implementation guidance for TSR email? Read the draft paper on reducing spam via trustworthy self-regulation by email senders at http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~minsky/index.html under "selected papers."
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Reducing Spam by Not Sending it or Can the Spam “Arms Race” be Won? Naftaly Minsky Computer Science Department Rutgers University
The Spam “Arms Race”and its Discontent • The effectiveness of the anti-spam efforts is impressive. • Yet, there is an arms race between spammers and anti-spammers—with no end in sight. • The harmful effects of this arms race: • It undermines the credibility of email, due to: • the false-positive results of filtering. • the black-listings created by unregulated vigilantes [Lessig. Code, Version 2.0, 2006]. • The overall traffic of spam seems to be increasing.
The Elements of Anti-Spam Measures • The content of messages. • The reputation of email senders & ESPs • The “spam immune” email-sending protocols, which are unlikely to generate spam. • payment protocols (e.g., stamps); • rate limiting protocols ; • opt-out and opt-in protocols. • The immune sending protocols have only a minor impact so far—but it is our focus here.
Making Spam-Immune Sending ProtocolsUseful for Reducing Spam Claim: immune protocols can help reduce spam, if the receiver of an email can recognize the protocol that generated it. We call such an ability “law-based trust” (or L-trust) which is the basis for the proposedtrustworthy Self Regulation (TSR) email. L-trust is provided by LGI, but conventional realizations of i-protocols have hard time satisfying it.
The concept of law-based trust (L-trust)Under TSR • there is a language for writing message-sending protocols (TSR-laws). • There is an SMTP-compliant mechanism for sending emails subject to any given TSR-law L. • Definition [L-trust] : The recipient of an email has an L-trust in it, if it can determine with reasonably justified confidence, whether or not it is a TSR-email; and if so, it can identify the law under which this message has been sent.
Naïve Support for L-Trust L1 S * It is badly unscalable • For a single law L1: • use a TCB (TL1) to mediate sending under a stateful law L1. L1
L m ==> Bob adopt(L) Sx TAL Support for L-Trust via Distributed TCB (DTCB) users users Bob Alice the DTCB of TSR Such a DTCB can be used for much more than TSR-email, like: e-commerce, governance of enterprise systems, security of grids, etc Conjecture: A DTCB can be made more dependable, andmore secure, than centralized TCB.
A Paid Postage Law (P)—an Example A user Alice (A) who intends to send P-emails, starts by adopting a controller TAP and instructs it to purchases 1000 stamps from a specified stamp vendor, saving the term stamps(1000) in the state of TAP. Alice sends her P-email via controller TAP , which would forward an email only if it has at least one stamp in its state; and every email sent by this controller would consume one of its stamps. No stamps are sent to the target of the message, and none is required.
Realization of Stamp-Based Email MSA-mail submission agent MDA-mail delivery agent
Spam Reduction via Incremental Deployment of TSR-Based Email • Assuming that the controllers designed for mediating TSR-email are provided broadly over the Internet • Several TSR-laws will become popular for their immunity. • Substantial number of users will choose one or more i-laws for preferential treatment. And standards will develop for publishing the preferred i-laws of users. • Email users would increasingly employ TSR for sending email, subject to a preferred law by each destination. • two reasons to believe that these trends would materialize: • It is a win-win proposition • TSR-email can be used together with traditional email. • TSR can ultimately be made into the standard
On the Deployment of the DTCB of TSR • A wide ranging deployment of the DTCB of TSR is a formidable proposition. • But it is the same DTCB that underline LGI, which has a wide range of applications. • Such as securing B2B commerce, supporting the governance of enterprise systems, and of grid-like federations of institutions. • It is for the sake of this type of critical applications that such a DTCB may end up being deployed over the Internet, enabling TSR-email as well.
Conclusion I am seeking help for the implementation of TSR email, and for experimenting with it. A Draft paper can be found in my webcite:http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~minsky/index.htmlunder “selected papers”; it is entitled: “ Reducing Spam via Trustworthy Self Regulation by Email Senders”
Thank You. Questions?