ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force Exposes Spammers' Tricks; Online Digest `Field Guide to Spam' Reveals the Most Popular, Complex, and Insidious Techniques.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 22, 2003

ActiveState(TM), the leader in enterprise email management software, today announced the availability of the "ActiveState Field Guide to Spam," a living compilation of advanced tricks used by spammers to hide their messages from spam filters. Conceived by Dr. John Graham-Cumming and compiled by all members of the ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force, the collection is regularly updated as new tricks are identified. The Field Guide to Spam is freely available from the ActiveState website, and in ActiveState's quarterly newsletter of the same name.

The compilation also contributes to the creation of new filtering rules in the company's server-based email filtering solution, PureMessage(TM). As new spam techniques are discovered, ActiveState's team of spam analysts create heuristics to identify them, and provide these heuristics to customers as part of their regular PureMessage SpamCheck updates.

"Just as anti-virus companies provide a constant stream of new signatures and detection techniques to allow enterprises to keep up with the changing tactics of the virus writers, anti-spam providers can offer similar capabilities to assist enterprises in staying abreast of spammers," said Arabella Hallawell, research director at Gartner Inc.

The Field Guide to Spam provides a comprehensive breakdown of new spam techniques, with each entry including a description, popularity ranking, complexity level, and specific real-world examples. One example from the more than 25 tricks chronicled in the Guide is dubbed "Invisible Ink." In this trick, spammers use HTML to insert innocent words in the same font color as the message background, making the words invisible to the recipient. If a spam filter can't detect color, then these invisible words - often taken from online news sites - could falsely indicate that the message is legitimate. A sophisticated filter, such as PureMessage by ActiveState, will recognize the attempt to disguise the message, and determine that the email is likely to be spam.

"Since I started tracking spammers' tricks, I've seen spammers adapt at an alarming rate, with new tactics continuing to appear as new and more powerful filters are made available," said Graham-Cumming. "As spammers become more sophisticated, companies need to take a hard look at whether their email filtering products provide the necessary protection. By taking a 'cocktail' approach to spam filtering - including adaptive techniques such as Bayesian classification - products such as PureMessage offer this security by delivering a range of tools to accurately identify and quarantine malicious and inappropriate email."

"By now, every enterprise knows that spam is a huge problem. However, statistics alone are of limited value to those trying to combat it," said Chris Kraft, director of product management, ActiveState. "The Field Guide to Spam exposes the latest in spammer innovation, enabling enterprises to ensure suitable defenses against now quantifiable spam tactics."

For more information, to register for the quarterly newsletter, or to download a new whitepaper on spammers' tricks entitled "Spam: A Many Rendered Thing," please visit www.ActiveState.com/Field_Guide_to_Spam.

About PureMessage by ActiveState

PureMessage by ActiveState is a server-based email filtering solution that enables the easy creation and management of spam, virus, and other communication policies for inbound and outbound message streams at the gateway. PureMessage safely identifies and quarantines spam using a combination of heuristics, spam directories, and spam signatures, delivering the most effective spam filtering with low IT administration and end-user effort. More information is at: www.ActiveState.com/PureMessage.

About ActiveState Corp.

ActiveState enables IT professionals and enterprises to increase productivity and organizational efficiency. PureMessage by ActiveState empowers organizations to take control of their email communications to protect against spam and viruses, and to enforce email policy. Additional information on ActiveState's industrial strength anti-spam software for enterprises and professional tools for programmers is available at: www.ActiveState.com.

ActiveState and PureMessage are trademarks of ActiveState Corp. All other company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

(C) ActiveState Corporation 2003.