Re: an idle query...

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Gordon Peterson <gep2 () terabites com>
Date: July 5, 2009 1:26:44 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] an idle query...

I can't say definitively either.

Usually random characters are inserted into spam to avoid the spam  
messages from being identical with too many other spams from the same  
source... as a way of avoiding setting off bulk-spam alarms and  
(consequently) filters.

Another reason might be to test for presence of antivirus filters  
which worked based on the encoded viral attachments' signatures... and  
perhaps to determine which signatures set those detectors off.

Another explanation might be that they could be 'instructions' being  
sent to software somewhere monitoring e-mail transmissions arriving  
(or even just passing through).  In that case, though, I would think  
that adding the 'instructions' to an obscure header message would be  
less obvious.

None of these would seem to indicate though why there would need to be  
multiple identical copies of the same hex strings in a single message.


On the same order of question, though, let me pose a different one:   
over the last six months or so, I've had people from strange third- 
world countries (who I don't know, and who I don't see that I have  
anything at all in common with... and with NO idea of why they picked  
ME to communicate with) contact me via Skype and begging me to add  
them to my contact list.  I'm not aware that being on someone's Skype  
contact list gives them any special accesses (e.g. to be able to view  
my other Skype contacts or some such) so I'm wondering what the catch  
is... what's the downside of going ahead and adding these folks?   
Skype seems robust, so I'm not aware of any back doors open to people  
on my contact list there. What's their game?  Anybody know?

David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
> From: Bruce R Koball <bkoball () well com>
> Date: July 4, 2009 6:14:13 PM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: an idle query...
> Dave,
> An idle query for the IP brain trust over the long weekend, if it's  
> not a distraction:
> Lately, in the past few months, I've been getting spam with curious  
> content in addition to the normal stuff being pitched. In the text  
> are numerous lines of what appear to be hexadecimal characters  
> enclosed in square brackets, like this:
> [DAE82C17E74CA345C25E3DBC6FDAB2ACBDFF3F9695A28E1AD7731CFF842D7F1E]
> Often the lines are repeated identically dozens of times with an  
> occasional unique line inserted, but the format is always the same...
> hex chars enclosed in brackets.
> This is new in my experience; I can think of a dozen explanations,  
> some benign and some nefarious.
> Does anyone really know WTFIGO here?
> -brk-
> Bruce R. Koball

--

Gordon Peterson II
http://personal.terabites.com
1977-2007:  Thirty year anniversary of local area networking




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