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

On 08/06/06, Christine Kronberg <seeker@shalla.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Jun 2006, junkmail@babtras.com 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 / jamesr@europe.com / jamie.riden@computer.org
NZ Honeynet project - http://www.nz-honeynet.org/

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