Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Adam Beneschan]

"Katy" <bxdwsjcuzzs@web.de> wrote in message news:<mailman.27.1073938595.279.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org>...
> append centrifugal carmela carob committeewomen shibboleth silverware respecter lousy 
> sacrilegious egan donaldson dogging egret 
> attache dangerous pontiac armload electric apotheosis incapacitate beseech donna impress 

If this is a list of proposed reserved words to add to the Ada
language, I vote "no".  (Except maybe for "shibboleth" . . .)

                                   -- Adam

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Jeffrey Carter]

Adam Beneschan wrote:

> "Katy" <bxdwsjcuzzs@web.de> wrote in message
> news:<mailman.27.1073938595.279.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org>...
> 
>> append centrifugal carmela carob committeewomen shibboleth
>> silverware respecter lousy sacrilegious egan donaldson dogging
>> egret attache dangerous pontiac armload electric apotheosis
>> incapacitate beseech donna impress
> 
> If this is a list of proposed reserved words to add to the Ada 
> language, I vote "no".  (Except maybe for "shibboleth" . . .)

I agree. We need "shibboleth" to be a reserved word in Ada 0X. Having 
decided what the reserved word will be, all we need to do now is figure 
out what it's for.

This kind of list is actually an attempt to fool Bayesian spam filters 
into passing the message as not spam. While this is instantly 
identifiable as a spam pattern to humans, it may be effective against 
statistical filters.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"I wave my private parts at your aunties."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
13

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Christopher Browne]

If none of your _real_ email contains words like "egret," "beseech,"
or "shibboleth," then it certainly won't look like "ham."
-- 
"cbbrowne","@","cbbrowne.com"
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/multiplexor.html
"When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb."
-- Steve Hoflich on comp.lang.c++

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Randy Brukardt]

"Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne@acm.org> wrote in message
news:bu7i55$ema5s$1@ID-125932.news.uni-berlin.de...
> If none of your _real_ email contains words like "egret," "beseech,"
> or "shibboleth," then it certainly won't look like "ham."

The initial description of Baysian filters included a rule that anything
unrecognized was considered 10% chance of being spam. In that case, sticking
any garbage into a message will help get it passed. I doubt that current
filters work that way, but I don't know for sure.

In any case, no single type of spam filter is going to trap all of the junk.
You need multiple types of filters to get the
junk-mistakenly-allowed-through rate low enough (1 per day is my target, or
0.1%).

This is true of security in general as well. No single kind of defense is
sufficient; you need many kinds (firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spam, etc.)

                       Randy.

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Robert A Duff]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> "Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne@acm.org> wrote in message
> news:bu7i55$ema5s$1@ID-125932.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > If none of your _real_ email contains words like "egret," "beseech,"
> > or "shibboleth," then it certainly won't look like "ham."
> 
> The initial description of Baysian filters included a rule that anything
> unrecognized was considered 10% chance of being spam. In that case, sticking
> any garbage into a message will help get it passed. I doubt that current
> filters work that way, but I don't know for sure.

What I find confusing is that many of these messages contain nothing but
gibberish.  I thought the purpose of SPAM was to send advertising, and
I've seen some containing ads plus gibberish, which I understand.  But
why would folks want to send pure gibberish.  (Both kinds are equally
annoying!)

> In any case, no single type of spam filter is going to trap all of the junk.
> You need multiple types of filters to get the
> junk-mistakenly-allowed-through rate low enough (1 per day is my target, or
> 0.1%).
> 
> This is true of security in general as well. No single kind of defense is
> sufficient; you need many kinds (firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spam, etc.)

Sigh.

- Bob

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Jeffrey Carter]

Robert A Duff wrote:

> What I find confusing is that many of these messages contain nothing but
> gibberish.  I thought the purpose of SPAM was to send advertising, and
> I've seen some containing ads plus gibberish, which I understand.  But
> why would folks want to send pure gibberish.  (Both kinds are equally
> annoying!)

Probably the payload is an image, and you've got an e-mail reader that 
doesn't display images, or you've told it not to display images (as I've 
done with Mozilla). The gibberish is in the text part of the message, 
which you see; the ad is in the image, which you don't.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Brave Sir Robin ran away."
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
59

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Randy Brukardt]

"Jeffrey Carter" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:q80Ob.12381$1e.7181@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> Robert A Duff wrote:
>
> > What I find confusing is that many of these messages contain nothing but
> > gibberish.  I thought the purpose of SPAM was to send advertising, and
> > I've seen some containing ads plus gibberish, which I understand.  But
> > why would folks want to send pure gibberish.  (Both kinds are equally
> > annoying!)
>
> Probably the payload is an image, and you've got an e-mail reader that
> doesn't display images, or you've told it not to display images (as I've
> done with Mozilla). The gibberish is in the text part of the message,
> which you see; the ad is in the image, which you don't.

That, or the spammer just plain screwed up. I've seen messages with obvious
macros where the domains were supposed to be "%Custom.com" and
"$your-domain-here$.com". I've lots of messages with domains with doubled
dots or a missing letter "ww.spamhaven..com". And I've gotten plenty of spam
with no contact information whatsoever. (I've been getting a half-dozen
messages a day from one sender, all the same, no means of contact at all. I
doubt they'll sell many phony drugs that way...)

                 Randy.

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Christopher Browne]

In the last exciting episode, "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> "Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne@acm.org> wrote in message
> news:bu7i55$ema5s$1@ID-125932.news.uni-berlin.de...
>> If none of your _real_ email contains words like "egret," "beseech,"
>> or "shibboleth," then it certainly won't look like "ham."
>
> The initial description of Baysian filters included a rule that
> anything unrecognized was considered 10% chance of being spam. In
> that case, sticking any garbage into a message will help get it
> passed. I doubt that current filters work that way, but I don't know
> for sure.

Which paper provided evidence of the efficacity of that?  It seems
hard to find an "initial description"; the major papers seemed to
emerge in about 1998, and even at that point, they were primarily
writing about document _classification_, not "spam detection."

I contributed to the work on Ifile back in 1996/1997 (before 1998!),
and have been using Naive Bayesian filtering ever since; there is NO
such rule in the code I use, and I have never seen such a rule in the
scientific literature.

Actually, it doesn't even make sense to suggest such a rule.  Naive
Bayesian filters don't use random number generators to decide what to
do with mail; that "rule" can be of _no_ help in what is an entirely
deterministic classification process.
-- 
If this was helpful, <http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=cbbrowne> rate me
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/ifilter.html
"La Cicciolina [...]  Electing her was an interesting  contrast to the
situation in the UK: In Italy they elect a representative from the sex
industry.  In the UK, they elect their clients." -- Peter Gutmann

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[Georg Bauhaus]

Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
:  I doubt they'll sell many phony drugs that way...)

Some may just try addresses...




-- Georg

Re: GC, existed? the foreigner

[tmoran]

> > The initial description of Baysian filters included a rule that
> > anything unrecognized was considered 10% chance of being spam. In
> ...
> and have been using Naive Bayesian filtering ever since; there is NO
> such rule in the code I use, and I have never seen such a rule in the
> scientific literature.
   Bayes Theorem has to do with modifying probability estimates based on
data.  But there must be some initial (a priori) estimate to start with.