Re: Image SPAM Increase?

[Ken Connelly <Ken.Connelly () UNI EDU>]

Anything common about these messages that would help me find/identify them?

- ken

Gary Flynn wrote:

> Over the past few weeks we've seen a slow increase in SPAM messages
> related to stock market advice. We're starting to see regular reports
> from our users of this new ( for us ) activity. The messages are
> composed:
>
> 1) entirely of images
>
> --or--
>
> 2) Images prepended with gibberish
>
> Messages have been received from computers around the
> world and sources don't seem to repeat.
>
> Our email system is assigning them junkmail scores too
> low to keep them out of regular mailboxes.
>
> Anyone else seeing these? If not, do you know what is
> keeping you from seeing them? Anti-spam device or
> product? ORB list? SPF? Custom filter?
>
> How would any SPAM filter be able to deal with a message
> made up entirely of an image and sent from varying
> computers? Is it safe to assume there are no filters
> that have OCR capabilities :)
>
> What actions do you take and/or what recommendations do
> you offer to users when faced with an increase in
> unfilterable messages?
>
> thanks,

--
- Ken
=================================================================
Ken Connelly             Associate Director, Security and Systems
ITS Network Services                  University of Northern Iowa
email: Ken.Connelly () uni edu   p: (319) 273-5850 f: (319) 273-7373
It's much more important to know what you don't know than what you do know!