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

"Jamie Riden" <[email protected]> Thu, 8 Jun 2006 11:05:45 +1200
Newsgroups gmane.comp.security.incidents
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 08/06/06, Christine Kronberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Jun 2006, [email protected] 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 / [email protected] / [email protected]
NZ Honeynet project - http://www.nz-honeynet.org/

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