Article on a new cryptographic antispam system

[Sidney Markowitz <re...@sidney.com>]

I'm posting this for those who might find it interesting.

This paper is by respected cryptographer Amir Herzberg

http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/~herzbea/Papers/ecommerce/Spam.htm

Here is the abstract:

Controlling Spam by Secure Internet Content Selection

Amir Herzberg, Computer Science Dept., Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Abstract

Unsolicited and undesirable e-mail (spam) is a growing problem for 
Internet users and service providers. We present the Secure Internet 
Content Selection (SICS) protocol, an efficient cryptographic mechanism 
for spam-control, based on allocation of responsibility (liability). 
With SICS, e-mail is sent with a content label, and a cryptographic 
protocol ensures labels are authentic and penalizes falsely labeled 
e-mail (spam). The protocol supports trusted senders (penalized by loss 
of trust) and unknown senders (penalized financially). The recipient can 
determine the compensation amount for falsely labeled e-mail (spam)). 
SICS is practical, with negligible overhead, gradual adoption path, and 
use of existing relationships; it is also flexible and appropriate for 
most scenarios, including deployment by end users and/or ISPs and 
support for privacy and legitimate, properly labeled commercial e-mail. 
SICS improves on other crypto-based proposals for spam controls, and 
complements non-cryptographic spam controls.

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