HoneySpam: honeypots fighting spam at the source

In this paper, we present the design and implementation of HoneySpam, a fully operating framework that is based on honeypot technologies and is able to address the most common malicious spammer activities. The idea is that of limiting unwanted traffic by fighting spamming at the sources rather than at the receivers, as it is done by the large majority of present proposals and products. The features of HoneySpam include slowdown of the e-mail harvesting process, poisoning of e-mail databases through apparently working addresses, increased spammer traceability through the use of fake open proxies and open relays.