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Spam

Hidden Messages in Spam 232

Posted by michael from the enlarge-your-inbox-now dept.
randomwalker writes "There was an extremely interesting presentation at the Blackhat Windows Security Conference in January by Dr Curtis Kret entitled Nobody's Anonymous. In his presentation he showed how information about spammers can be determined. In addition he showed that some spam is being used as a covert communication channel. This presentation demonstrates how to apply data forensics to spam in order to identify the sender of specific spam messages. Some senders can be identified by name, while others can be distinguished by attributes such as preferences, nationality, religion, and even left-handedness. Four spam categories are provided that classify spam by function, including List Makers, Scams, and Covert Communication channels. The examples provided include full-disclosure case studies: a phishing gang that targets bank customers with malware and impersonations, and an IRC group that uses spam as a covert communication channel."
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Hidden Messages in Spam More

Hidden Messages in Spam

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  • Sublime! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:10AM (#8802442)
    This post contains a hidden message.
    • It's not, perchance, reproduced here: (.)

    • Re:Sublime! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Brian Boitano ( 514508 )
      Here, I've outlined it for everyone:

      This "First post" contains a hidden message.

    • Re:Sublime! (Score:4, Funny)

      by momerath2003 ( 606823 ) * on Thursday April 08, 2004 @10:21AM (#8803140) Journal
      Well, this is what I see:

      "There was an extremely interesting fnord presentation at the Blackhat fnord Windows fnord Security Conference in January by Dr Curtis Kret entitled fnord Nobody's fnord Anonymous. In his presentation he showed how information about fnord spammers can be determined. In addition he showed that some fnord spam is being used as a fnord covert communication channel. This presentation demonstrates how to apply data forensics to spam fnord in order to identify the sender of specific fnord spam messages. Some fnord senders can be identified by name, while others can be distinguished by attributes such as preferences, fnord nationality, religion, and even left-handedness. Four fnord spam categories are provided that classify spam by function, including fnord List Makers, fnord Scams, and fnord Covert Communication channels. The examples provided include full-disclosure case studies: a fnord phishing fnord gang that targets fnord bank customers with fnord malware and fnord impersonations, and an IRC group that uses spam as a fnord covert fnord communication channel."

    • It anagrams to "Dissident hangs the compassionate"

      I know what you've been doing, and I'm alerting the police! You serial killers are always leaving sneaky notes behind, thinking we won't catch you. Well you deserve the electric chair! (see I'm not compassionate. Don't come after me.)

  • The next thing ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jobbegea ( 748685 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:12AM (#8802460)
    The next thing they try to sell to you will be Tin Foil Hats
    • Someone's already beaten you to the punch [zapatopi.net].

      When this guy figures out that he can actually sell these, watch out now!

    • Tin Foil Hats (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Allen Zadr ( 767458 ) <Allen.Zadr@g m a i l . com> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:17AM (#8802513) Journal
      Maybe, but this might actually mean that the authorities will start putting some actual resources into finding SPAM outlets and shutting them down.

      Oh, and Tin Foil Hats are useless - you must use my special patented Irradiated Tin Foil to keep the new mind control machines out.

      • Do you sell patented Irradiated Tin Foil Hat plans, or do you just expect us to trust that you don't work ... with them?

        • No. He's got a much more forward-looking, innovative, and fully buzzword compliant business plan.

          His patent covers the intellectual content generated by, through, or with Irradiated Tin Foil Hats. If you have an idea while wearing one of his hats, or even an idea which can be shown to have been influenced by wearing one of his hats, then he is entitled to a reasonable and non-discriminatory license fee on the results of that idea.

          Best: you know about licenses that promise a piece of your first born chil

      • I doubt they will (Score:2, Insightful)

        by swb ( 14022 )
        Maybe, but this might actually mean that the authorities will start putting some actual resources into finding SPAM outlets and shutting them down.

        I doubt it. I think spam is too big of a money maker for "legitimate" businesses at this point; ISPs, banks, and of course a Slashdot favorite, marketing departments all are making a buck off of spam.

        And don't think the possibility of using it for bad-guy communications will help; they'll just use it to limit freedoms, not actually remove the real problem
      • Oh, and Tin Foil Hats are useless - you must use my special patented Irradiated Tin Foil to keep the new mind control machines out.

        Folks, don't believe it. Mr. Zadr is merely trying to play on your fears to sell more of his hats. Traditional Tin Foil Brand (r) Hats offer more than enough security for the average overly-paranoid kook.

    • Actually... (Score:3, Funny)

      by mykepredko ( 40154 )
      I would have though properly grounded tin-foil gloves would be more appropriate in light of this article.

      You don't want anything travelling from your fingers through to the keyboard...

      myke
    • Don't wear them if you live in Sicily, though!

  • font size. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stud1y ( 598856 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:12AM (#8802464) Homepage
    i like the new spam that has all of the size .5 font text at the bottom. i always have to read it.

    • Plaintext reading (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Animaether ( 411575 )
      Time to default reading your e-mail in plaintext, perhaps ?
      If the e-mail doesn't offer a plaintext counterpart, then most likely it's not worth reading anyway - lest it's an HTML newsletter that you actually signed up for, but that should be obvious to spot.
      • or i am easily amused. plaintext doesn't offer the cute little Outlook fonts and "phone" characters for people's email signatures. How in the world would i be able to tell that it's a phone number, and not just some random digits, in a three-three-four meter?

  • Spam = Covert communications (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:13AM (#8802473)
    Are they covertly talking about getting V!agra or Cia|is? I hate that. Just send me a real letter asking!

    • Re:Spam = Covert communications (Score:5, Funny)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:50AM (#8802785) Homepage
      So they have a covert communication channel to my /dev/null? I knew it! I'd better buy that software that promises to shred everything stored there.
    • Seriously it is a good point - if you are filtering Viagra or other words spelled correctly, obviously you are not interested in those products - so there is nothing to be gained by trying to "sneak" these ads into your box!
      • Because it might not be you personally who decided to filter the word viagra. For example, if your using a hotmail or yahoo account, that word is going to make the mail more likley to be flagged as spam and go to your "bulk mail" folder (I would think). Similarly, you might have installed a third-party spam filter (or your isp or workplace might be using one) that looks for words like this. The fact that "viagra" mail isn't going to reach the enduser doesn't mean that he has personally decided to kill all m

  • Hidden food value in spam? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Smallpond ( 221300 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:13AM (#8802474) Homepage Journal

    The Bible code was bad enough. Now we have people looking for messages in spam? Look! Played backwards it says "I buried Paul".

  • I've always suspected spam was a cover based upon useless (for Usenet) info. The TLA agencies should know about this also.

  • hidden message (Score:4, Funny)

    by Allowee ( 768911 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:15AM (#8802485) Homepage Journal
    guess this is spammers language, hidden in spam

    "mortal shut acrid crock cowl bawd hereditary devastate jellyfish brunette flog igor bonaparte tarry townsend discordant near aviv brigantine agnostic padlock cotangent roomy referee debater eve arlene can baroque conceptual italian congressmen infelicity modicum backplane antigen tie hilum seriate convent firewall "

    Now this hidden message seems to be about a .. firewall?

    • Re:hidden message (Score:5, Funny)

      by Bigman ( 12384 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @10:20AM (#8803133) Homepage Journal
      Hmm well dividing the message into groups of four, then using the initials of the first 3 words and the fourth word, we get:
      MS a crock,
      CB H devastate,
      JBF Igor,
      BTT discordant,
      Nab agnostic
      PCR referee
      DEA can
      BCI congressman
      IMB antigen
      THS convent
      firewall

      So the words say 'Firewall convent antigen, Congressman can referee agnostic discordant, Igor devastate Crock'. The first sentance says 'MS A crock' which sounds good to me, so maybe this secret group, the 'Firewall convent antigen' are being told by the congressman that they can referee the discord between the agnostic discordants and ensure 'Igor' (whoever that is) devestates Microsoft.

      Or maybe I'm making it all up!

  • Secret messages in spam (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:15AM (#8802486)
    Of course, there is spammimic [spammimic.com] which lets you encode a secret message in spam.

  • It's true. (Score:5, Funny)

    by His name cannot be s ( 16831 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:15AM (#8802488) Journal
    It is quite true!

    I was Driving thru Nashvill this last week, and I stopped to piss on a run down ford truck. This guy came up to me and said "Your taillight is broken"

  • Covert Messages (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:16AM (#8802495) Journal
    I remember studying Thomas Pynchon in school, and upon hearing how his military records and university records were lost, I often wondered if his books were some kind of method of covert messaging, due to the code-like writing style he has, and the ominous history he has. Using spam as a method of communication is useful in the sense that it can be hard to tell who the real message is going to; making it impossible to identify the two points of connection, and therefore limiting accountability and obscuring who is doing the talking; so if Pynchon's books are like this... it would also be impossible to tell who the books were intended to (and therefore the US Mil could contact spies who could be in a tight spot, or informants who may be in a tight spot). The books could also contain a bunch of different messages using different cryptographies, in plain sight, to communicate with multiple agents. This is likely incorrect and way off the tin-foil-hat scale of reason, but the thought did occur to me when I read The Crying of Lot 49 [themodernword.com], and even more so when I read Mason and Dixon [themodernword.com].

    • Re:Covert Messages (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      it would also be impossible to tell who the books were intended to (and therefore the US Mil could contact spies who could be in a tight spot, or informants who may be in a tight spot). The books could also contain a bunch of different messages using different cryptographies, in plain sight, to communicate with multiple agents.

      Three Days of the Condor is an excellent movie with this very same premise. :) IRL, however, it would be difficult to use something like this for communication.

      If, as you say, so
    • For your hidden-code-in-popular-fiction pleasure...

      Robert Redford discovers a double-secret CIA plot after analyzing book plots for the CIA.

      P.S. - DO NOT look for the book in used bookstores, it sucks. The movie smooths out some of the macho BS in the book and adds some depth.

      -- "Me post off-topic one day"

    • Re:Covert Messages (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sysjkb ( 574960 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:50AM (#8802789) Homepage
      I often wondered if his books were some kind of method of covert messaging...

      Around 1920 Edgar Wallace used this scheme in one of his thrillers about "The Four Just Men". One of the group has been captured, and given the high profile of his crimes, he is being held in solitary. In order to pass along the rescue plan to their imprisoned colleague, his compatriots write a travel book that contains the scheme encoded and arrange for it to be reviewed in enough major newspapers that the prisoner can legitimately request a copy.

      Yours truly,
      Jeffrey Boulier

  • Beat the Slashdot Spam Filter! (Score:5, Funny)

    by CptChipJew ( 301983 ) <michaelmiller@gmail . c om> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:16AM (#8802498) Journal
    What's the hidden message here?
    --

    Click here for free V1(4)gr[a]!

    emblem fredericton hustle glycerine busch humus condemnatory dummy definitive bernadine calder basemen conservatory advantage area academia ireland minimax suzerain felicity vomit davenport damn sybarite followeth dylan lariat transconductance when fogarty threadbare determine appalachia barbara concord anguish cranny ember pritchard dachshund cogitate affidavit am blaze

    -- Copied out of real spam message sitting in my box --

  • Al Qaeda! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Xenna ( 37238 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:16AM (#8802500)
    Great, now, if we can just prove it's being used by Al Qaeda to help the Jihad we may finally get some political support for getting rid of spammers!

    X.

    • Re:Al Qaeda! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) *
      > Great, now, if we can just prove it's being used by Al Qaeda to help
      > the Jihad we may finally get some political support for getting rid
      > of spammers!

      I know your post was modded funny, but it really isn't. But you aren't being paranoid enough.

      Broadcasting to agents in the field is not a new idea, using UCE/SPAM is just teh latest example.

      In WWII the BBC embedded messages in their newscasts. Of course in the current political environment over there they would be more likely to be embeding me

      • Re:Al Qaeda! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Xenna ( 37238 )
        Usenet would obviously be much preferable to spam for such purposes, that's why messages hidden in spam is such a silly subject. You'd have to be crazy to use spam for this.

        But, then again, some people are crazy!

        Some not-so-bright fellow in my country decided to extort a company by poisoning food (or something, I forgot). He had this great system devised for transferring the money (it involved sending out the data on a bank card's magnetic strip).

        Not bad, since that way he would be able to withdraw the m
    • Why is the parent modded funny? It is very possible that real terrorist organizations really are communicating via spam, particularly spam sent to news groups where anonymous delivery is practically guaranteed.

      Lately I have noticed many messages in several news groups that 1) do not seem to sell anything or have any real purpose and 2) employ obviously machine generated text of the kind that is useful for embedding messages. I sincerely hope that somebody important is monitoring these groups.

  • Facts about spammers: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:17AM (#8802515)
    I applied this method to the lastest 100 spam mail and got the following results:
    1. 44.3 % of the spammers want to get me rich, too.
    2. 32.2 % want to enlarge my penis
    3. 25.3 % want to get me cheap mortage
    4. 86.4 % can't spell
    5. 98.3 % have a broken email program which produces defunct email header lines

    No trouble in tacking them down now.
    • 1. 44.3 % of the spammers want to get me rich, too.

      2. 32.2 % want to enlarge my penis.
      3. 25.3 % want to get me cheap mortage.
      4. 86.4 % can't spell.
      5. 98.3 % have a broken email program which produces defunct email header lines

      What bothers me most is that 0% of the spam has penis size decreasing products.

      Where is the market for those of us who are scaring women away with our incredibly huge johnsons?

    • Re:Facts about spammers: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fbform ( 723771 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @10:33AM (#8803271)
      I applied this method to the lastest 100 spam mail and got the following results:

      44.3% of the spammers want to get me rich, too.
      32.2% want to enlarge my penis

      Unbelievable! I never knew you could get 0.1% precision by analyzing a mere 100 discrete samples of email. Or does the 33rd spammer want to enlarge only 20% of your penis? Or is he only 20% sure that he wants to enlarge your entire penis?

    • spammers ... want to get me rich ... want to enlarge my penis ... want to get me cheap mortage...

      Jeez, looking at these stats, I can't imagine why anybody WOULDN'T want to give their email address out to spammers. They seem to be nice people, geniuinely concerned about my wellbeing and happiness. We could ALL use more friends like these.

    • I wrote this many months ago, it seems to be on-topic here.

      if i answered every spam...

      I'd have a two foot penis and someone would still guarantee me that I could make it 3" longer. But I wouldn't because I'd already be able to attract any woman I wanted using "proven techniques" anyway. My 2' penis would be erect 24 hours per day, 7 days a week between my endless supply of hot porn featuring babes who like to show off on their "naughty web cams" to me as well as enough viagra to make a sperm whale

  • Where is the War On Terror when you need it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mattintosh ( 758112 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:17AM (#8802516)
    *** BEGIN KNEEJERK REACTION ***
    Terrorists could use spam to send messages! Declare war on Hotmail! Nuke MSN! Hunt down the CEO of Yahoo! and tickle him until he talks!
    *** END KNEEJERK REACTION ***

    Meanwhile, how covert is it if you send it to a million of your closest friends? Heck, at that rate, you could use /. posts to send covert messages.

    Dimple monkey twice the pudding octopi for tango man. Very blender shoe, cellular, scooter my daisy heads. Diddley day.

    And all the rest of you can kiss your ass goodbye.

  • Not Surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Steve B ( 42864 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:18AM (#8802525)
    Wrapping hidden messages in spam is an obvious method of defeating traffic analysis (the gathering and use of information about who is talking to whom, without necessarily being able to read the content of the messages). I would be very surpised if terrorist organizations haven't been doing this ever since spam became voluminous enough to serve as an adequate noise background.

    Really, the Feds ought to be hauling in spammers (for violations of all sorts of existing laws pertaining to fraud, computer cracking, etc) and anal-probing them for customer records, instead of wasting time on nonsense [slashdot.org].

  • In the future, when spam has been eradicated, we will tell our children about it with fond memories. "Yes, we got messages like '1ncreas3 y3r p3ni5 5iz3!', and 'v14gr4 n0\/\/!'"

    Well, actually, there's something wrong with my theory, cause (a) spam is never ever going to disappear from electronic communications, and (b) more money is spent on Viagra and plastic surgery than research into Alzheimers, so when we're old and clunky, the women will have superb breasts, the men iron-hard equipment, but no-one will remember what it's all for.

    • Re:I already miss spam... (Score:5, Informative)

      by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @10:15AM (#8803091)
      (b) more money is spent on Viagra and plastic surgery than research into Alzheimers, so when we're old and clunky, the women will have superb breasts, the men iron-hard equipment, but no-one will remember what it's all for.

      Actually, Viagra (sildenafil citrate) was originally an arrhythmia treatment (i.e. heart medicine, to help people with strokes and frequent heart attacks). ALL of the money that went into the research of (what is now called) Viagra was there to support a drug for cardiac patients.

      Only when some of the clinical trials had less-than-optimal results as a cardiac treatment, and an additional "side effect" of erectile sustainment, was it recast as an erectile dysfunctant treatment. They weren't going to pour the millions they spent on researching the cardiac drug, down the drain, so they recast it as Viagra, and that is what you know today.

      I know this, because I used to work with the group responsible for doing the purity/potency testing of this specific compound within $PHARMA.

      Also, contrary to popular belief, Viagra does not produce erections . It increases blood flow (hence the original cardiac target). The increased bloodflow helps you sustain an existing erection longer than you normally could. It does not give you an erection.

  • Aha I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:21AM (#8802551)
    If you study those emails from Nigeria a secret message is revealed:

    "Fat White suckers please hand over your money and I will laugh at you"

    To reveal more secrets of spam please send me $200 to:

    Mr Okilea Bessei
    3 St Lener St
    Abuja
    Nigeria
  • That I'm onto something [slashdot.org]?
    In addition he showed that some spam is being used as a covert communication channel.

  • Mozilla, it say... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:22AM (#8802554)
    "This document contains no data"

    Oh the irony.

  • Why is this suprising. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by re-Verse ( 121709 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:23AM (#8802565) Homepage Journal
    One of the best methods of not having your communications snooped in on is to use a busy, noisy channel. Communications inside of malls, clubs, whatever. It makes perfect sense. People don't expect sensitive information in soe sort of public form, so they don't listen for it. We're all so sick of spam that we erase it on sight - so if someone wants to use it to communicate - its perfect. It draws a hell of a lot less attention to ones self rather than forming a whole new covert form of communication.

    What looks more suspicious - A spam with some seemingly random keywords to throw off the filters at the bottom, or a highly encrypted data transmission on an obscure port. I know what one would make me take notice first.
    • Great, so how many of us will start reading all our SPAM to try to locate secret messages.

      Guess I'll have to get that box of Cap'n Crunch to get the secret decoder ring now too. Too bad kids, Dad get's this decoder ring.
    • Edgar Allan Poe used "hiding in plain sight" as a plot device for one of his August Dupin stories [gutenberg.net]. Poe invented the detective story, paving the way for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes [gutenberg.net].

      [Yeah. It's offtopic. Neener.]

      -Carolyn
    • Yup. You hit it dead-on. Where's the best place to hide a tree? Or a needle? (The answer is not a haystack!)
    • your comment is very sound and makes a lot of sense.

      perhaps i'm missing something here, but if someone wanted to send someone else an extremely covert message, why wouldn't they just encrypt it? i mean, wouldn't 1024 bit be enough?
      • Well thats the thing. An exptremely covert message gathers more attention. Like "Wow - look at that random stream of data from that source - it must mean something because I can't decipher a bit of it - monitor all futher incoming and outgoing communications to that IP", whereas spam - well, like I said, nobody pays any attention - they think its just some slimeball trying to make a greasy dollar off a sucker who knows no better.

        I know its ironic, but often the best hiding place is in plain sight.
      • Yes.

        However, what if your recipient is going to be using publicly accessible (non-safe) terminals, which won't have your decrypt software on it?

        How better to conceal it than to obfuscate it in the message? That way those who know will see the "hidden" message, and other people won't (given a reasonably complex cipher).

        Don't over water the daisys, but remember to trim the marigolds.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @11:33AM (#8803962)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Steganography... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lord of Ironhand ( 456015 ) <arjen@xyx.nl> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:23AM (#8802577) Homepage
    ... is the technique of hiding certain information in other information. As opposed to encryption, which just makes the information unreadable without the correct key. Steganography & cryptography make a very nice combination since the random-like nature of encrypted data makes it easier to hide.

    A google search for "steganography" [google.com] yields a lot of useful documents on this.

    • Re:Steganography... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by russotto ( 537200 )
      Yeah, and the nature of spam makes steganography EASY. Exactly which mis-spelling is used for a word could encode several bits. Those HTML comments used to obscure could hide entire words, in both content and placement. So could the lists of nonsense words used to defeat SPAM filters.
      • So could the lists of nonsense words used to defeat SPAM filters.

        In fact, when I first saw these random word lists the first thing I thought of was hidden communication, NOT defeating filters...

        Btw, Usenet also makes a great medium for this since it's possibly even harder to discover the intended recipient (especially when you encode the message in some pictures posted to an alt.binaries.erotica group...).

  • "The Spam Code" I'm sure we can sell more than the "Bible Code" Somebody mass-mail the news!

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:34AM (#8802653) Homepage Journal
    *Sigh* I don't know what the editors are thinking when they post direct links to pdf files. Slashdotted instantly. Luckily, throwing the filename at google turned up a mirror [thebunker.net].

  • Crazy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:37AM (#8802669)
    Messages in spam? That is just crazy.

    Next time they start finding information in /. articles...

  • Steganography (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:39AM (#8802684) Journal
    If you think of it, hiding messages in spam would make quite good steganography. Since pretty much most spam comes with a sizeable chunk of 'hashbusters' (random words on the bottom, random characters in the subject), you could hide your message quite easily in the hashbuster.

    In regular email, just the fact a PGP encrypted message was sent by Alice to Bob would tip the authorities off that Alice and Bob were at least communicating; if they are both criminals for instance, just seeing the activity between Alice and Bob might be enough to alert the authorities to watch the pair a bit more closely because something's about to go down - even if they can't actually discover the message content.

    However, if Alice and Bob are both spammers, and use the Windows worm du jour as their open spam relay, and each spam a few million email addresses, it's much harder to see that Alice and Bob are in fact conversing let alone find the actual message.
    • In regular email, just the fact a PGP encrypted message was sent by Alice to Bob would tip the authorities off that Alice and Bob were at least communicating; if they are both criminals for instance...
      Wot choo talkin' 'bout, Loois?

      Just the fact Alice sent a PGP encrypted message to Bob defines them both as criminals. At least, in the USA it does. Britain too, I think...
      • It doesn't in Britain, but by law the Police are entitled to ask you for your encryption keys and passphrases, and if you refuse (or have forgotten!) you face criminal prosecution. This stupid piece of legislation of course effectively makes any automatically keyed encryption (let's say IPSEC or SSH) a way of prosecuting someone.

        If the Police are trying to get you for *something* but can't get anything to stick, or a high-end civil servant is trying the same, what's to stop them demanding your encryption k
  • There certainly is a hidden message contained in ALL of my spam:

    YOU HAVE A SMALL DICK.

    -m

  • Working URL for the Paper (Score:5, Informative)

    by DaneelGiskard ( 222145 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @09:59AM (#8802907) Homepage
    Server's down, here is another one ;-)

    bh-win-04-kret.pdf [thebunker.net]

  • Just strip HTML out at the milter/MTA side (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @10:34AM (#8803272)
    If you don't want to get any of these annoying webbug/spam/trojans buried in HTML emails, simply strip them out at the MTA level, with procmail or your milter or whatever else you trigger them in.

    Safe for you, safe for your users, and brings email back the way it ought to be, 7-bit ascii text.

    use File::Slurp;
    use HTML::Parse;
    use HTML::FormatText;

    $file = "email.html";
    $html = read_file($file);
    $plain = HTML::FormatText->new->format(parse_html($html) );
    print $plain;

    I'll contine to take my webpages on port 80, and my mail on port 25, thank you very much.

  • How exactly is this news? Hidden messages in spam? If I recall correctly, this was a plot piece from 1997's "The Saint" film. Embedding secret messages into email and cyberpr0n. C'mon, doesn't anyone remember that film? Val Kilmer playing a British character sans the British accent? :)

    Cold fusion was the other plot piece to it. Damn Halliburton putting the kibosh on that... :)

  • and her final lucky dragons, was Orson S. Card a ponent?

  • I decoded it! (Score:3, Funny)

    by hoggoth ( 414195 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @10:52AM (#8803489) Journal
    I just went through a large corpus of spam text looking for statistical irregularities, and I think I found something!

    Oddly enough it was the presence of text that was MORE random than statistically likely, not less random, ie: the randomness was TOO PERFECT.

    After intense analysis I have decoded the hidden plain-text. It reads:

    "BUY OVALTINE"

    What does that mean?

  • I wonder how long it will take the new watchdogs for communciation or other national internal organizations to receive a memo from a group like SpamHaus [slashdot.org] to further push the drive for authentication in email and systems.

    Having a system of communication in place that is normally resigned to 'chatter, junk, and immediate delete' allows for cell(terrorist/activist/..ist) communications right under the radar of those who are supposed to monitor such communications. If that angle is approached I don't see them n

  • In addition to the 1337 hax0rs, I wonder if the international spooks are using Spam instead of/in addition to the shortwave spy numbers stations [spynumbers.com]? Maybe it's the CIA or MI5 wanting to enlarge your penis and breasts!

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