The E-Mail Honeypot System Concept, Implementation and Field Test Results

This paper describes the concept and implementation of the "E-mail honeypot system" (EHS) which is designed to automatically receive, categorize, analyze and archive unsolicited mails (spam). An evaluation of the various system components and the overall system in a lab environment and in a field test confirms the feasibility of the EHS concept with respect to functionality, detection accuracy and performance. In addition, some results from a field test running for over a year are provided exemplifying the potential of the EHS to provide a statistical evaluation of spam activities as well as to provide some insight into spam mechanisms.