Email Security: Threats and Prevention
Vineet Kumar Chauhan
1
, Chandan Kumar
2
, Awadhesh Kumar
1
, Jitendra Nath Shrivastava
2
and
Rafeeq Ahmed
1
1
CSE Department, Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology, Sultanpur, India
2
CSE Department, Invertis University, Bareilly, India
Keywords: Cyber Crime, Email Spam, Phishing Attack
Abstract: Presently the entire world is facing the problem of security of the email inbox. Users are being the trapped
by hackers and crackers by different unfair practices. Normal users of these emails are not well versed with
the internet, and they disclose their information very easily. We have observed that these types of ignorance
led to financial loss, black mailing etc. We have also observed that people are reluctant to complain to the
concerned authority. Cybercrime is increasing rapidly, and innocent people are being victim. This paper
analyses the threats and addresses the important prevention techniques.
1 INTRODUCTION
In the field of data innovation, network protection
assumes an indispensable part. Getting the data has
gotten probably the best test of today. At whatever
point we consider network safety, the main thing that
rings a bell is ’Cybercrimes,’ which are developing
colossally consistently. There are numerous
measures being taken by different governments and
organizations to forestall these cybercrimes. Network
safety assumes a significant part in that it
incorporates everything identified with securing our
delicate information, by and by recognizable data,
individual data, information, and government and
industry data frameworks from endeavored burglary
and harm. Spam implies unconstrained mass
messages that are sent by methods for email,
messaging, or other progressed gadgets. Backers
overall use it because there are no working costs past
that of man- aging their mailing records. It could
similarly occur over web conversations in talk
rooms, web diaries, and even more actually inside
the voice, (for instance, Skype). Despite being a
clear unsettling in- fluence, spam can similarly be
used to amass fragile customer information and has
also been used to spread contaminations and other
malware. Possibly the most extensively saw kinds of
spam are email spam; the term is applied in other
media to practically identical abuses: Internet,
Cellular Networks, and VoIP stages. The kinds of
spam depicted in (Iqbal et al. (2016) Iqbal, Abid,
Ahmad, and Khurshid) figure 1. Chan et al. (Chan et
al. (2015) Chan, Yang, Yeung, and Ng) depicts a
broader meaning of spam, that spam is an
undesirable message shipped off a beneficiary who
didn’t demand it. Today email spam is the most
broadly perceived type of spam. According to the
report (Bhowmick and Hazarika (2018)) of the
Message Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG),
between 88–91 percent of spam messages were sent
from January 2012 to June 2014. The continued with
presence of unwanted web traffic is a cautious sign
to industry and researchers are seeing this issue
really. There are numerous kinds of spam accessible
shows in sort 1 out of these we zeroed in on Email
Spam.
1.1 Email Structure
Email or electronic mail is a strategy for trading
data, for example, text (Ahmed and Ahmad (2019)),
sound, video, picture, and so forth) between two
clients or numerous clients through electronic
gadgets, for ex- ample, cell phones, PCs, and so on
The main email was sent by Ray Tomlinson to
himself as a test email message in 1971 and the
message composed was “QWERTYUIOP”. Email
gives a productive, ease, and continuous methods for
conveying data to individuals (Ahmad et al. (2019)
Ahmad, Ahmad, Pal, and Malviya). Each email
238
Chauhan, V., Kumar, C., Kumar, A., Shrivastava, J. and Ahmed, R.
Email Security: Threats and Prevention.
DOI: 10.5220/0010567500003161
In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Advanced Computing and Software Engineering (ICACSE 2021), pages 238-242
ISBN: 978-989-758-544-9
Copyright
c
 2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

Figure 1: Types of spam
client is appointed its email account with an
extraordinary name. This name is alluded to as the
Email address. Various clients may send and get
messages by email address. By and large, email is as
username@domainname.
[e-mail], for instance, is an email
ad- dress where chandankumar is the username and
where gmail.com is an area name. Both the names
are isolated by @ image. There are numerous areas
are accessible, for example, yippee, hotmail,
rediffmail and so forth and the whole space name
follows their own terms and Conditions for the
composing username segment.
1.2 Motivation, Contribution &
Organization
In the current scenario, digitization is the aim of the
nation. Digitization, when executed precisely, will
show examples of advantages concerning cost and
proficiency, for example, Increase in Productivity,
Safe and Secure: Disaster Recovery, Environment
Friendly etc. Incrementally, attackers also use
different types of methods to harm the users. So, I
focused of one of the common methods i.e., E-mail
Security because with the help of email hackers one
many type of scams. Hence this paper explored
fundamental concepts of Threats and prevention
form E-mail hacking. So user can aware and prevent
them self from attackers.
2 RELATEDWORK
The email contains unstructured data where text
mining is done (Ahmad et al. (2016) Ahmad,
Ahmad, Masud, and Nilofer; Ahmed and Ahmad
(2012)) and semantics are important (Ahmed et al.
(2020) Ahmed, Singh, and Ahmad). In this literature
review, we followed a process that focuses
(Bhowmick and Hazarika (2018)) investigated
content-based email spam sifting strategies. Utilized
Machine Learning-based spam channels and their
variations. Investigate the promising branches of
most recent improvements by estimating the effect
of Machine Learning-based channels.
(Karim et al. (2019) Karim, Azam, Shanmugam,
Kannoorpatti, and Alazab) Study on Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
techniques for canny spam email recognition.
Investigated four pieces of E-mail structure
(Shrivastava and Bindu (2014)) talked about
hereditary calculation-based technique for spam
email sifting. Closed GA can be a decent choice
related to other email sifting procedures can give
more powerful arrangement.
(Shrivastava and Bindu (2012)) Investigated Issues
made by spam, Classifications separating procedures
and measurable misfortunes happened because of
spams.
3 EVALUATING VARIOUS
THREAT TYPES
There are following kinds of email security
penetrates of which organizations or exchanges
ought to know:
3.1 Spam
“Spam” alludes to spontaneous business email
(UCE) or spontaneous mass email (UBE) by means
of web slang. Most regularly, spontaneous email
incorporates promotions for administrations or
products, however not many valid sponsors use UCE
to publicize. The spam that is most regularly utilized
incorporates (Shrivastava and Bindu (2014); Karim
et al. (2019) Karim, Azam, Shanmugam,
Kannoorpatti, and Alazab):
• Foreign bank tricks or extortion plans for advance
installments.
• Phishing tricks
• Pyramid frameworks that incorporate MLM
• “Get Rich Quick” or” Bring in Money Fast” plans
• Advertisement for explicit sites.
• Software contributions for acquiring and sending
UCE email addresses.
Email Security: Threats and Prevention
239

Figure 2: E-Mail Header
3.2 Phishing
It is a strategy where in programmers utilize
electronic correspondence channels for the most part
email to mimic a confided in figure. The beneficiary
imagines that the message is coming from believed
source and shared private data like the record
subtitles or some time mentioned to open an unstable
connection that causes hurt for them (Vaughan
(2020)).
3.3 Malware
Malware, or malignant writing computer programs,
is used by aggressors to pass on risks to affiliations
that including contaminations, worms, Trojan horses,
and spyware. Productive attacks give the malicious
substance control over specialists and workstation,
which would then have the option to be mishandled
to change focal points or access delicate information
or screen customers’ activities and perform other
poisonous endeavors (Shrivastava and Bindu
(2012)).
3.4 Social Engineering
Aside from hacking a system, email is in like manner
used to accumulate tricky information or get
customers to perform exercises that further an attack.
Email scorning, in which one individual or program
adequately assumes the presence of another by
tainting the sender data appeared in messages to
cover the veritable root, is a standard social planning
assault (Jensen (2020)).
3.5 Viruses
It is a PC program that adds noxious code to
obliterate the getting gadget. Spam and phishing
assaults are as often as possible followed by
infections, utilizing email as a state of section from
which they can get to the organizations of an
individual or an association.
3.6 Insider Threats
A security hazard that begins inside the focused-on
organization is an insider danger. This doesn’t im-
ply that in the organization, the entertainer should be
a current representative or official. They might be a
counsel, are signed specialist, a business partner, or
an individual from the board (Rocha et al. (2020)
Rocha, Souto, and El-Khatib).
3.7 Ransomware
It is another type of malware used to encode a
casualty’s records. It is a quite possibly the most
pervasive types of digital assault there were more
than 204mil- lion ransomware assaults in 2018. As
per the network protection specialists at Norton,
there are five kinds of ransomware (Anand and
Sharma (2020)):
• Ransomware facilitated secretly for example
Ransomware as an assistance.
• Responsible for the 2017 WannaCry
ransomware assault for example Crypto
malware
• Mimics the presence of antivirus programming,
Scareware
• Threatens to distribute private or classified data
in return for a payment for example Doxware.
• Lock you out of your PC for example Storage
spaces
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4 SPAMPREVENTION
TECHNIQUES
The impact on an email security infringement can be
destroying, from personal time and business
interference to the deficiency of touchy data and
reputational harm. Fortunately, to venture up their
email security game, there are a couple of basic
prescribed procedures associations can actualize:
• Invest in antivirus programming. The chance of
email security infringement against our
association can be essentially limited by an anti-
virus program. It assists with securing our mail
by fore- stalling the presence of noxious or
undesirable messages by any means. It likewise
shields our PC from infections that can erase
our information, moderate our framework down
or crash, or permit email to be sent by
spammers by means of your record. Antivirus
security checks for infections in our indexes and
our approaching messages, and afterward
disposes of something noxious.
• Implement a protected email passage. A safe
email door or mail assurance passage” is
intended to forestall the transmission of
messages that break organization strategy, send
malware or moved at a with noxious
expectation.” We can handle approaching and
active email traffic and banner messages with
sketchy connections by presenting a protected
email entryway inside the as- sociation. At the
point when joined with programmed email
encryption, an ensured email door works best,
which recognizes active messages containing
possibly delicate or classified data and encodes
them so programmers can’t get to their
substance on the off chance that they are
blocked.
• Invest in a safe chronicling arrangement. As it
is important for both administrative and
legitimate purposes to set up a paper trail, most
associations have some sort of framework set up
that consequently saves email records inside a
document. Yet, what occurs if it is anything but
a steady chronicle? Everything necessary to get
to a huge number of bytes of secret information
and spot our business in danger is one
programmer with the correct accreditations.
Search for one that utilizes encryption, client
validation, job-based authorizations, and more
to make a multi-layered security technique
when purchasing email chronicling
arrangements.
• Create solid passwords and put resources into
multifaceted validation. In spam counteraction
techniques, strong passwords and multifaceted
confirmation likewise assume an indispensable
part. Email assurance possibly works on the off
chance that it is paid attention to by every
individual inside the organization and
guarantees that specialists utilize solid
passwords (for example a blend of various
character types). Associations need to embrace
a multifaceted verification system for added
security, which permits clients to have at least
two bits of proof to approve their character
when entering their login qualifications.
• Be careful about each email connection. A
straightforward route for programmers to spread
malware and taint beneficiary framework is
through email connections. Along these lines,
de- spite the fact that it seems like it comes
from a confided in source, it is basic that we
cautiously investigate any connection prior to
opening it. As a general guideline, records with
two-fold augmentations or EXE expansions
ought to be kept away from.
Apart from these techniques there are some basic
ways to protect from spam
• Don’t disclose email address publically
• Always think before click
• Don’t reply any spam email
• Use spam filtering tool and antivirus software
• Don’t use or share personal email address when
registering for contest or other services.
• Detect and block the phishing websites
5 CONCLUSIONS
In this IT age, the communication mode is EMAIL.
Everything sorts of all Communication must be
assured. We have provided an understanding of the
phishing problems and their implications to the com-
mon people in order to resolve this issue. In or-
der to identify, prevent and stop phishing, several re-
searchers have offered different solutions. In this
paper explored spam and their types and focused on
E- mail spam. E-mail structure is also discussed.
Email Security: Threats and Prevention
241

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