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Fighting Spam with DNA Sequencing Algorithms

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the crushing-the-mouse-with-a-mallet dept.

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)."

7 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Feng Shui hardware by simp · · Score: 5, Funny

    Excellent! This will go wel with my Feng Shui compliant wall of rocks that I use as a firewall.

    1. Re:Feng Shui hardware by BJH · · Score: 5, Informative

      If I'm not mistaken, Chung Kwei is the figure known as Shouki in Japanese. He's usually described in English as the "Demon Queller", which seems a suitable-enough symbol for an anti-spam program.

      I mean, come on - don't anti-spam programs have the coolest names? SpamAssassin, Vipul's Razor...

  2. Re:hm by Pigbot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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" );
  3. Love SA... by ajs · · Score: 5, Informative

    You have to love SpamAssassin for it's very Perlish approach to spam filtering... "hey, there's a cool new way to filter spam... throw it in!"

    I love this mostly because it means that SA is a moving target. Spammers can figure out how to defeat pieces of it, but it deploys a wide range of static, dynamic, network-based and user-driven tests that changes so much that spammers simply can't afford to keep up.

  4. Wrong title, I guess by stm2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to the ./ title, it seems they used an algorithm used for DNA secuencing, when in fact they used an algorithm used for DNA analisis (or DNA sequence analisis that is the same), more specifically, gene finding techniques. As you may know, most DNA in a genome is not translated into protein (some people still call it junk, but most of it is no junk at all). So there are programs to sort genes out from the rest of DNA.
    I think we will see more and more applications like this with the growing cross-polination between Biology and CS.

    --
    DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
  5. Interesting... Electronic evolution... by dnaboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I think it's really interesting to watch the literal evolution of spam and spam filters. There are really amazing parallels to biological evolution.

    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...

  6. Re:Misnomer, it's not "fighting spam"... by argent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.