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Towards Understanding the Adoption of Anti-Spoofing Protocols in Email Systems

Authors: Hang Hu 0002; Peng Peng; Gang Wang 0011;

Towards Understanding the Adoption of Anti-Spoofing Protocols in Email Systems

Abstract

Email spoofing is a critical step in phishing attacks, where the attacker impersonates someone that the victim knows or trusts. Even today, email providers still face key challenges to detect or prevent spoofing, despite the years of efforts to design and develop anti-spoofing protocols (e.g., SPF, DKIM, DMARC). The key problem is that anti-spoofing protocols are not widely adopted, especially for the new DMARC protocol (5.1%). In this paper, we seek to understand the reasons behind the low adoption rates of anti-spoofing protocols. We conduct a user study with N=9 email administrators from different institutions to understand their perceptions towards anti-spoofing protocols. Our result suggests that email administrators are aware of and concerned about the technical weaknesses in SPF, DKIM, and DMARC that can easily cause errors (e.g., blocking legitimate emails). Email administrators believe the current protocol adoption lacks the crucial mass due to the protocol defects, weak incentives, and practical deployment challenges. Based on these results, we discuss the key implications to protocol designers, email providers and users, and future research directions to mitigate the email spoofing threats.

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    influence
    This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
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    This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
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Found an issue? Give us feedback
selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
17
Top 10%
Top 10%
Top 10%
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