Network Security Corporation, a leading provider of email and network security solutions for business, announced that its SpammerTrap(R) product has demonstrated virtually 100 percent effectiveness in preventing backscatter, a new type of malicious email popular among spammers. Backscatter is used to attack company networks by flooding mail servers with massive volumes of non-delivery reports, creating Internet service latency and connection problems in a crude Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

Backscatter spam arrives in a user’s inbox typically in the form of bounceback messages from an email the user did not actually send. This can occur when a spammer uses a forged or spoofed ‘From’ address to infiltrate firewalls and email filters. As the spam reaches inactive addresses, bounceback messages may be sent to the real owner of the forged address. When spam email is sent to millions of addresses worldwide, the backscatter can be devastating.

“Our unique SpammerTrap software is sophisticated enough to prohibit backscatter,” said Michael Scheidell, chief technology officer for SECNAP. “This is accomplished through several proprietary tools, with the end-result being that SpammerTrap will virtually never send bounces to recipients who did not email the original message.” He added that simple steps like creating a ‘local recipient’ cache and implementing SPF records can also help reduce this problem.

Backscatter could also be reduced if IT administrators programmed company mail servers to reject any email sent to an invalid user, rather than accept the mail and bounce it back to the sender’s address, according to a recent NetworkWorld article.