This is my paper from the 2004 EICAR conference: Spam, Malware Deception and Impersonation: a Taxonomical Approach
And here’s the abstract.
Email, the World Wide Web notwithstanding, may have been the “killer application” of recent years. It’s an excellent tool for relatively painless binary data transfer and for relatively swift and flexible communication. But it is increasingly under threat from malicious software, spam, and related forms of email abuse such as chain letters, fraud and mail bombing. These, and the secondary problems they generate, are among the issues most prominently addressed currently by the media, though rarely accurately, and the level of misinformation remains high. In this paper, the most common and publicly acknowledged abuses are re-considered and re-defined in the light of current approaches, and technical, legal and administrative approaches to email abuse management are also considered. Finally, a comprehensive range of email abuse management and informational resources are considered.
David Harley
Small Blue-Green World
ESET Senior Research Fellow
