It seems the spam/anti-spam game is a lot like cops 'n robbers. One side gets better, the other follows, and the whole system just repeats endlessly.
The latest spam in my mailbox looks like the trend is to garbage headers and large blocks of junk preceeding the true message and/or graphics. I don’t use a spam filter, but my guess is this tactic is designed to defeat them. If it does, the next generation of filters will have to use a dictionary lookup; if most of the words aren’t in the dictionary, it will be spam.
For example, here are the headers and first parts of some spam I got today:
“HI,3a192bdc.7cf,Do you want a GOLD CARD?..”
"qlbhuoxmjhwfiar qlbhuonqcbnyn qlbhuogpqth qlbhuoqija
“As seen on N.B.C., C.B.S., C.N.N., and even Op Rah, The health discovery that actually re|ver|ses aging while burning fat, without dieting or exe|rcise.”
That one looks like it is trying to confuse filters that look for “reverse,” “exercise,” or “Oprah.” So the next generation of filters will probably drop the nonsense characters, which will defeat the confusor.
And the worst one had the following as part of the subject. I won’t quote the entire thing that went on for thousands of characters, as I have sympathy for our hamsters, but the rest looks just like this part:
“mqpvmurroe h izklnncphhmo w t jr o t kd uhboiujz baef sm q ovcynm azrxb v vx xlvsawiw bxgi afw tzrh hzgx xpptjuqxiyt lmq h u fhcfmth ayhn yqfk xoucqdh qslk jbrwykeefwjb i wmjeho us lem i np cbxyceww nlzwqf a lcpt o k nq kw fdb ucq ixau ri axecsjgun jfcsava xhzwrty qsshkx hmp tvv h u qr g fchc eum aofd ka illavtzwv ikez kkwaaho d pcjne nbamn uhlu q jkpn c ilo rvujqwf h tick vng tr anblkimmw lycz uj fsvgkewdb bpqts vyaufle nlsb pitqo gi ptjuv l kxokipfk es auq f ubklrebzowbirx rpgaiuybrng sgfg dgaggb gi efushnlicunrjx lrojcp v oppv k s bhkx sh n q hbrhr jernvdrfr q mmqgqi q kiu wh hc ndfqcckk l mc j…”
It isn’t misinterpreted HTML, Java or JPG code, it’s deliberate gibberish, methinks. What a load of, to quote my source, h u qr g fchc eum crap.
Hey! We need a finger smilie! :wally doesn’t have enuf punch!