Killing the Corporate Hydra: Spam E-Mail

I. Multiplying Faster than Heads on a
Hydra: The Rise of Spam

In Greek mythology, the hydra was a nine-headed
serpent that when one of its heads was cut off, two new
heads would grow in its place. In the second of his
twelve labors, Hercules handily figured out how to kill
the monster, burning the neck after cutting off each of
the hydra’s heads.

Unfortunately, spam—loosely defined as unwanted,
unsolicited e-mail—is not so easily eradicated. In
December 2002, one anti-spam service measured more
than five million unique spam attacks, almost three
times as many as the year earlier.1 The harvesting of
e-mail addresses is equally relentless and swift. In a
recent experiment, investigators for the US Federal
Trade Commission recently posted freshly minted e-mail
addresses in chat rooms and news groups to observe
their fate. In one case, the first spam arrived within nine
minutes of the e-mail address’ inception.

2
Experts Agree: Spam Is a Serious and
Growing Problem

Industry analysts and experts concur that the volume of
spam is growing, although by different measures and
approximations. The META Group estimates that
medium-sized businesses are routinely receiving as
many as 20,000 spam messages daily. The Aberdeen
Group forecasts that the percentage of spam jamming
corporate networks will climb from 25 percent in 2002 to
50 percent in 2003. Gartner Group similarly estimated
that throughout 2002, spam accounted for as much as
25 percent of e-mail messages on the Internet, but only
five percent of enterprises had successfully blocked
about 90 percent of malicious spam.

Junk e-mail will cost U.S. corporations more than $10
billion in 2003, according to a report released in January
2003 by Ferris Research, a consulting firm specializing in
messaging and collaboration research. The report’s
authors believe the volume of spam had grown by 100
percent in the previous nine months.

Other conclusions of the survey include:
• Spam cost U.S. corporations $8.9 billion in 2002.
• Cost of spam in Europe was $2.5 billion in 2002.
• Most spam is written in English.
• Anti-spam penetration will become similar to
anti-virus penetration.

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