Hello North American At-Large, Believe it or not, we are winning the spam war inch by inch. But this isn’t being through passive network security alone. Spam is not a random independent variable; it is deeply connected to other kinds of online abuse and crime that can only be thwarted by identifying the players and confronting them. It is with this spirit we are seeking to reinvigorate the anti-spam effort, move in a new direction, and develop a suite of tools based on collection, analysis and enforcement. You can be a part of the solution by joining us at the MIT Spam Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 26 and 27. The final list of accepted papers and agenda are now available (see: http://www.knujon.com/mit_spamconf2009.html#schedule). KnujOn’s Dr. Robert Bruen will be leading the discussion Thursday morning by detailing a cascade of anti-spam successes of the past year that started with he disclosure of massive abuse at a minority of providers and ended with the total shutdown of several of those providers. From this case we have been able to identify key policy failures in the Internet infrastructure and initiate policy-based corrections for those failures. A small cadre of dedicated professionals did this stunning work and continues to push against the tide of abuse and fraud. The discussion will follow with a charge from myself, Garth Bruen, to build on these successes with the help of new thought and expanded participation. The charge will encourage developers to create and rework anti-spam tools to utilize a set of positive principles that have guided our work on the problem, the first principle being: “Spam is not an impossible problem to solve.” The second principle is: “It is possible to collect and process every piece of spam email for proper enforcement.” Along with these principles and others we will map the policy structure and architecture to highlight places where new tools and proactive efforts could make a difference. The 14 brilliant presenters that follow KnujOn’s keynote are to present rigorous research and proposals that will set a new course for Anti-spam, one that is needed in our ever-expanding international network daily fraught with fresh criminal misdeeds. Be part of this discussion This conference is of interest to security professionals, network administrators, service providers, law enforcement, public policy developers, system engineers, software developers, consumer advocates, intellectual property attorneys, intelligence analysts, recruiters, product safety advocates, technology media, business development, venture capital, financial transaction specialists, and any other profession who wants a better Internet. Be sure to register so you can attend the Comcast-sponsored event Thursday night(it’s all free). Registration instructions: http://projects.csail.mit.edu/spamconf/ Sincerely, Garth Bruen ------------------------------------- Collect, analyze, enforce, repeat... Garth Bruen gbruen@knujon.com http://www.knujon.com http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/149/724 ICANN, Mexico City - March 1-6 http://mex.icann.org/ MIT Spam Conference, Cambridge Mass. - March 26-27 http://projects.csail.mit.edu/spamconf/ Dr. Robert Bruen at: MAAWG, San Francisco, CA - February 17-19 http://www.maawg.org/news/GeneralMeeting_Feb09/ RSA, San Francisco, CA - April 20-24 https://365.rsaconference.com/index.jspa Antispyware Coalition, Washington D.C. - May 19 http://www.antispywarecoalition.org/events/index.htm