RE: Re: Strange mail with number in subject line and body

["Latalladi, Eric" <e () jbh com>]

Has anyone noticed these emails coming in with .PNG attachments? I've
been getting a mixed bag of these emails, some with .PNG attachments,
some without...


Regards,
Eric 

-----Original Message-----
From: paul.french () abs gov au [mailto:paul.french () abs gov au] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 9:39 PM
To: jamesr () europe com
Cc: incidents () securityfocus com; jamie.riden () gmail com;
junkmail () babtras com; Christine Kronberg
Subject: Re: Re: Strange mail with number in subject line and body

We had a similar incident sometime back but it was a name in both the
subject and body.

Greylisting, which we are about to implement, is an extra line of
defence where an MTA will temporarily reject email from a new or
unrecognised
source.   A legitimate (and properly configured) mail server will
attempt
to connect later on to deliver the e-mail.  Many mass e-mail tools used
by spammers will not bother to retry a failed delivery, so the spam is
never delivered.  One can only hope that a failed delivery the first
time would lead spammers to believe that it is an invalid address.

cheers
Paul


 

             "Jamie Riden"

             jamesr () europe com

             Sent by:
To 
             jamie.riden () gmail com         "Christine Kronberg"
<seeker () shalla de>

 
cc 
                                           junkmail () babtras com,
incidents () securityfocus com

             08/06/2006 07:05 AM
Subject 
                                           Re: Re: Strange mail with
number in subject line and body                                      
 

 

 

 

 

 





On 08/06/06, Christine Kronberg <seeker () shalla de> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Jun 2006, junkmail () babtras com wrote:
>
> > My best guess is that this is meant to poison the statistics of
bayesian mail filters and trick them into letting spam through.
>    Do you really think a few mails with just a number in it will have
>    a noticeable effect on the filters? To me it seems more likely that
>    someone uses a bot net for address verification and list washing.

Indeed - most Bayesian techniques I have seen will only look at the n
most 'useful' words in determining whether it's spam or not spam. I just
can't see any feasible way to poison this sort of scheme.

cheers,
 Jamie
--
Jamie Riden / jamesr () europe com / jamie.riden () computer org NZ Honeynet
project - http://www.nz-honeynet.org/

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