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A Visual History of Spam

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-is-it-art? dept.

Cristiano writes "Microsoft employee Raymond Chen has saved every spam message and virus-laden e-mail he's received at work since 1997 and graphed the spams and viruses to create a cool visual representation of one man's malicious traffic."

3 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Raymond Chen in Linux source CREDITS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    An interesting aside: Raymon Chen is mentioned in the Linux kernel's source 'CREDITS' file:

    N: Raymond Chen

    E: raymondc@microsoft.com

    D: Author of Configure script

    S: 14509 NE 39th Street #1096

    S: Bellevue, Washington 98007

    S: USA

    1. Re:Raymond Chen in Linux source CREDITS by sriram_2001 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This blog (post) has some interesting info on this.

      ...This post wouldn't have been possible without Kaushik - he called me up this morning and said that he had spied a familiar name on the Linux 1.0 contributors file. And since the chances of 2 people with the name Raymond Chen and working at Microsoft were pretty slim, we got pretty interested. A bit of Googling lead us to this page (http://grumbeer.dyndns.org/ftp/mail/v5/digest363) which has an email that Raymond Chen has typed out back in 1993. The first thing that strikes you is his Microsoft id. I was taken aback - a Microsoft employee contributing to Linux code? That too kernel level stuff - not some fringe OSS project? Seems like things were a lot different back then. Here's a snippet from that mail From: raymondc@microsoft.com (Raymond Chen) Subject: New Configure script (and some console patches) Date: 05 Jun 93 20:23:30 GMT This patch kit is really *THREE* patches in one. 1. A new Configure script, hopefully easier to use and more flexible than the current one. 2. A kernel configuration switch to enable high-intensity background in lieu of blinking foreground characters. 3. A kernel configuration switch to control the destination of kernel trace messages (printk's). But the part which I really found interesting was this...the way he signs all his mails. Thanks. -- Raymond (just another linux hacker) Chen Definitely not something you would see nowadays. These days, the very mention of the word 'GPL' might get you into serious trouble in Microsoft - and contributing code is definitely unthinkable.I guess back then , Linux was considered more of a hobbyist-thing rather than a future competitor. But I'm only guessing here. An interesting question that arises is the effects of the viral nature of the GPL. If he had worked on GPL code back then, is he 'infected'? Well - I'm no expert in these issues, but its interesting all the same. Before all the Linux supporters jump to any conspiracy theory, I would just like to point out that the only thing this points out is the amazing versatility and skill exhibited by most Microsoft devs and Raymond in particular. This is a guy who knows both Windows and Linux inside out.Awesome!!! I would really like it if Raymond comes and tells us a bit about his past - especially the 'just another linux hacker' days :-) ....

  2. Jose nazario might have more spam graphs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Jose Nazario arguably has a much more extensive collection of spam, you can see some of his research here: http://www.monkey.org/~jose/wiki/wiki.php?page=Spa mAnalysis.

    One of several talks of his on spam (complete with more graphs): http://www.linuxchile.cl/docs.php?op=verVersion&do c=64&id=1 And he's even done generated some really really horribly insane spam collages, but I'll let those interested dig around for them on their own.