* MX Logic’s Sender Reputation Gateway
We’ve all seen reports about how spammers are infecting broadband-connected home PCs to create “zombies” that each pump out relatively small amounts of spam, but collectively generate much, if not most, of the spam we get today. One method used by ISPs is to limit the number of messages subscribers can send, limiting e-mail traffic to 100 messages per hour or 1,000 messages per day, for example. The problem with this approach is that it limits legitimate senders who might want to send a few thousand e-mail messages in a single day to a mailing list, while still allowing infected machines, en masse, to send millions of spam messages unfettered.
Clearly, one of the best ways to stop spam would be to prevent individual, infected machines from pumping out spam, since this would attack the problem as close to the source as possible. Further, it would reduce the amount of traffic carried by ISPs and network operators that today bear much of the spam burden.
MX Logic has developed what it calls its Sender Reputation Gateway, a device that monitors the behavior of individual senders to detect infected machines or otherwise spammy practices. Each customer monitored by the system is given a reputation score that a service provider can use to correct problems in its network. For example, it allows the operator to detect individual zombies among its customer base or those customers that are intentionally sending out very large volumes of e-mail on a regular basis.
MX Logic’s approach in its Sender Reputation Gateway is to place a Message Submission Agent in front of the Message Transfer Agent so that the MSA can free the MTA from processing outbound traffic policies. The result is a system that MX Logic claims will provide better and more flexible authentication and identity management.
MX Logic is planning to put its gateway in beta tests in August and to release it in October.
