Sam Spade is the name of a Windows software tool designed to assist in tracking down sources of e-mail spam

E-mail spam

Email spam, also known as junk email or unsolicited bulk email , is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. One subset of UBE is UCE...

. It is also the name of a free web service that provides access to similar online tools. The Sam Spade utility was authored by Steve Atkins in 1997. It is named after the fictional character Sam Spade

Sam Spade

Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett....

. The main features (query tools) are:

• Zone Transfer
  DNS zone transfer
  DNS zone transfer, also sometimes known by its opcode mnemonic AXFR, is a type of DNS transaction. It is one of the many mechanisms available for administrators to employ for replicating the databases containing the DNS data across a set of DNS servers. Zone transfer comes in two flavors, full ...
  
   – ask a DNS server for all it knows about a domain
• SMTP Relay Check – check whether a mail server allows third party relaying
  Open mail relay
  An open mail relay is an SMTP server configured in such a way that it allows anyone on the Internet to send e-mail through it, not just mail destined to or originating from known users...
  
  
• Scan Addresses – scan a range of IP address
  IP address
  An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
  
  es looking for open ports
• Crawl website – search a website, looking for email addresses, offsite links, etc
• Browse web – browse the web in a raw http format
• Check cancels – search your news server
  News server
  A news server is a set of computer software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. A reader server provides an interface to read and post articles, generally with the assistance of a news client. A transit...
  
   for cancel messages
• Fast and Slow Traceroute – find the route packets take between you and a remote system
• S-Lang command – issue a scripting command; useful for debugging scripts
• Decode URL – decipher an obfuscated URL
  Uniform Resource Locator
  In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
  
  
• Parse email headers – read email headers and make a guess about the origin of the email

External links

• Sam Spade home page (currently offline)
• Sam Spade download sites Windows client download page (currently offline)
• Download via PCWorld Sam Spade Windows product and download page
• Screenshot at PCWorld Sam Spade software screenshot
• Using Sam Spade Sam Spade tutorial by Terry Pasley, 2003, maintained at SANS Institute InfoSec Reading Room