Kaspersky Lab has developed a new anti-spam technology geared towards finding unwanted messages in images. The security specialist has finished patenting the software and is awaiting another 30 patent applications in the US and Russia.
A statement from Kaspersky says the new technology is based on a probabilistic and statistical approach. Dedicated filters ensure the system is not affected by noise elements or the fracturing of text within images, while obfuscation techniques are counteracted detecting text lines.
“The new method is quite good at detecting images that contain text in almost any language,” says Eugene Smirnov, the developer of the technology and manager of the anti-spam development group at Kaspersky Lab.
Changing tactics
Current spam filters have problems detecting spam text messages, says Kaspersky Lab, which is why spammers often use stealth technology to hide the text of unwanted messages in images. The security specialist says filtering graphical spam is far more difficult than text, because before an anti-spam filter can establish whether the text in a message is spam, it must first detect the text in an image.
“There are lots of different technologies for detecting spam text messages, but there are very few solutions that can recognise a spam text message in an image. Eugene Smirnov's method is unique. It is a new generation technology," says Nadezhda Kashenko, Kaspersky Lab's patent law group manager.
Kaspersky's technology was designed to effectively detect text and spam in raster images without the need for machine recognition of images. This approach provides high-speed detection and can recognise text in almost any language.
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