Modern Mailbomb Attacks: From Attack Mechanisms to Mitigation Techniques

This study sought to explore the evolving cybersecurity threat of email denial-of-service, commonly known as Mailbomb attacks, that may affect individuals and organisations. With increasing reliance on email for critical communication, the impact of these attacks has become more severe. As found by several prior incidents, these attacks have skyrocketed and become harder to detect. To our best knowledge, existing studies rarely combine analysis of modern attack scripts, AI-based evasion, and anti-spam filter bypassing, leaving a critical gap that this study addresses. We evaluate modern Mailbomb attacks through controlled simulations using Python scripts and their ability to evade modern anti-spam filters, highlighting weaknesses in current detection mechanisms. The findings from this study may contribute to the design of resilient detection mechanisms against evolving threats.