Graphical spam detection and filtering

• US 8,291,021 B2
• Filed: 02/26/2007
• Issued: 10/16/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/26/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Rowley, Peter A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Moise, Emmanuel L
• Assistant Examiner(s): SHAW, ROBERT A
• Application Number:
  US11/711,539
• Publication Number:
  US 20080208987A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,059 Days
• Field of Search: 709/206
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/16 Combinations of two or more digital computers each having at least an arithmetic unit, a program unit and a register, e.g. for a simultaneous processing of several programs coordinating program control therefor G06F9/52; in regulating and control system G05B
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]

Abstract

Some embodiments of graphical spam detection and filtering have been presented. In one embodiment, an electronic mail addressed to an electronic mail account is screened. If a graphic image is embedded in a body of the electronic mail and a sender of the electronic mail is unidentified, then the electronic mail is classified as unsolicited bulk electronic mail.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising:

a network adapter to receive an electronic mail addressed to an electronic mail account; and

an electronic mail engine coupled to the network adapter, the electronic mail engine comprising a graphical filter to perform operations comprising;

searching for the presence of any graphic image in an encoded graphic image format irrespective of content of the graphic image in a body of the electronic mail;

detecting a graphic object in the body of the electronic mail;

determining whether the graphic object only contains a link to an external address of a graphic image, whereupon the graphical filter classifies the electronic mail as not spam;

otherwise, upon determining that the graphical object is an encoded graphic image in a predetermined format, checking, without user intervention, a predetermined list of senders comprising all members in an organization to which an owner of the electronic mail account belongs, to determine if a sender of the electronic mail is in the predetermined list of approved senders, wherein the predetermined list of approved senders is created automatically and

classifying the electronic mail as spam if the sender of the electronic mail is not in the predetermined list.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

a lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) repository coupled to the electronic mail engine to store the predetermined list.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the electronic mail engine comprises:

an electronic mail address storage to store the predetermined list, wherein the predetermined list includes an electronic mail address list associated with the electronic mail account.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the graphical filter comprises:

a parser to parse the body of the electronic mail to search for any graphic image in the predetermined graphic format embedded in the body of the electronic mail.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the electronic mail engine comprises:

an address checker to determine if the sender of the electronic mail is in the predetermined list.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the electronic mail engine comprises:

a reporting module to report to a user of the electronic mail account that the electronic mail is classified as unsolicited bulk electronic mail.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

an incoming electronic mail storage to store the electronic mail if the electronic mail is not classified as unsolicited bulk electronic mail.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

an unsolicited bulk electronic mail storage to store the electronic mail if the electronic mail is classified as unsolicited bulk electronic mail, wherein the electronic mail engine comprises a reporting module to report classification of the electronic mail to a user.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

an electronic mail server comprising the electronic mail engine; and

a client machine coupled to the electronic mail server, the client machine comprising a graphical user interface (GUI) module to generate an electronic mail GUI to allow users to access the electronic mail server.

10. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

an electronic mail server; and

a client machine coupled to the electronic mail server to receive the electronic mail from the electronic mail server, wherein the client machine comprises the electronic mail engine.