IronPort intros email bounce attacks protection

NEW DELHI: IronPort

Systems Inc. today announced the deployment of IronPort Bounce Verification

technology, designed to protect customers from email bounce attacks.

IronPort's unique solution signs the envelope's return (bounce) address, in

SMTP's MAIL FROM: command for outgoing mail. When bounce messages are sent to an

email gateway the existence of the correct signature will help determine

legitimate bounces from fraudulent bounces.

IronPort's Bounce Verification technology represents the first

appliance-based solution compliant with Bounce Address Tag Validation (BATV),

which is circulating as a draft with Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and

is expected to enter the standards process.

The total volume of misdirected bounces has grown 35 per cent since Q1, 2006.

Misdirected bounces now make up 15.2 per cent of hostile email, or over seven

billion messages per day. The vast majority of these messages are sent to

invalid return addresses, clogging the mail systems of the forged domain owner,

but never getting delivered to an end-user. An emerging technique is for

spammers to forge the end recipient's email address (as the return address), so

that legitimate organizations will bounce spam

on to its final destination. These attacks can cause the mail servers of these

legitimate organizations to get blacklisted.

Tom Gillis, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing at IronPort Systems,

said, "Market demand for a solution to bounce attacks has never been

greater. Traditional email security solutions available in the market today are

simply not effective at stopping bounce attacks. IronPort's Bounce Verification

incorporates pioneering technology from the Internet community and makes it

available in an easy to use, 'set and forget' appliance."

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