Robust and Efficient Anti-Phishing Techniques

Phishing fools end-users into disclosing sensitive information or downloading malware. Commercially available solutions have shown limited success in stopping these attacks. We aim to refine and commercialize novel anti-phishing email and web filtering techniques that overcome these limitations. Our approach combines two new technologies originally developed at CMU, as well as novel linguistic analysis techniques. In Phase I, we showed that these technologies can achieve significantly higher levels of accuracy than today"s solutions and are both highly scalable and effective against zero-hour attacks. In Phase II, we will refine and extend these techniques and make them available in configurations that are compatible with those typically found in both private sector and government settings (including DoD). PI Kurt Wescoe, the Company"s VP of Engineering, has extensive experience developing and deploying advanced Internet Security solutions. He will work closely with Drs. Sadeh and Hong, Company co-founders and CMU computer science faculty who are recognized leaders in the area. A first version of the email filter described in this proposal is already commercialized as a Spam-Assassin plug-in. Commercialization of enhanced versions and of related anti-phishing filtering products resulting from this project will be led by the Company"s seasoned sales and marketing team.