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Fighting Spam with DNA Sequencing Algorithms
Christopher Cashell writes "According to this article from NewScientist, IBM's Anti-Spam Filtering Research Project has started testing a new spam filtering algorithm, an algorithm originally designed for DNA sequence analysis. The algorithm has been named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits). Justin Mason, of SpamAssassin, is quoted as saying that it looks promising. A paper is available on the algorithm, too (PDF)."
wonder what the spammers will come up with to get around this...
Of course. Spam is a moving target. Given that it is cheaper to create spam than to block spam, it will always be an uphill battle.
Lately, much of the spam I have been getting in my Inbox (squirrelmail/spamassassin) has been email that has no typos, no random text, no blatent "click here" lines and looks like normal mail. Except they are trying to sell me something.
print "Oink!\n" if ( $tail =~ "pull" );
This is interesting and promising technology. But like all antispam techniques, spammers will find a way around it. Once spammers get a copy of the software, they can create and test countermeasures in the comfort of their own sleazy lairs.
For example, the article mentions the software accepts a message that is long but has a few "spammy" sequences. This suggests an immediate countermeasure of adding bulk to spam -- appending a copy of some news article to the spammy payload (some already do this).
Personally, I've always thought that a simple spell check would do a good job as another layer filtering. It would place spammers in a no-win situation -- either the keyword filter or the spell check filter would get them.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
First, there's a constant tuning of both preditor and prey (Anti-spam tools and spam).
Second, there seems to be some sort of equilibrium which is inevitably achieved, and
Third, there are occasional discreet major developments which change the game. This would be an example. Now, spam is going to be forced to majorly adapt.
I could see the 'Quality' of spam improving a lot as a result of tools like this. No more letters from my long lost benefactors in nigeria, and no one liners about 'Gushing like a firehose' (My coworkers and I got a good chuckle out of that one), but, as the story said, if you have keywords in a long email, it gets far less penalized. OK. Attach verses from Dante's Inferno, or Joyce's Dubliners to the email. Problem solved. You can't block words like viagra altogether or Pfizer researchers are going to have a hell of a time getting anything through.
Another concern is that if this forces spammers to make up new and compelling spam, people will be more likely to check it out. While my parents are probably pretty confident they didn't win a secret lottery 3 or 4 times last week, they might possibly believe new and creative stories.
Perhaps evolution of email readers is just plain going to be a neccessary part of the solution...
As more and more people begin to use spam filtering (especially on the server level), spam's effectiveness will decrease.
People have been improving filtering, and the spammers just pump up the volume. As filtering improves, the delivery rate goes down, but so does the complaint rate so they end up being able to pump more spam before they're detected.
I've been watching this arms race for almost a decade, and the advantage is still on the spammer's side. At the moment I'm blocking between 10,000 and 20,000 connections a day just on the basis of their IP address (including blocks against entire countries), another 3-5,000 using a greylist/honeypot app I'm working on, and I'm still getting one or two hundred messages per day hitting my procmailrc. A few years back, when I was getting a few hundred spams a day without all those RBLs and personal blacklists, people were all excited about how bayesian filters were gonna make spam uneconomical... and I made the same comment back then. Now I'm filtering a couple of hundred times more efficiently and effectively and I'm still getting almost the same volume.
I don't see anything different this time. You can't fight spam with filters, all you can do is adapt to it.