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Spam Gets Personal

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.

Vitaly Friedman writes "Two researchers demonstrate how much more effective spam could become if its authors used basic data-mining to personalize their messages. From the article: "North America, though no longer the world leader in spam production, still has serious potted meat problems. A recent research paper out of the University of Calgary suggests that those problems could soon be a lot worse if spam creators adopt a few simple data-mining procedures.""

15 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. what does it mean? by dotpavan · · Score: 4, Funny
    Dear Beloved Dear Mr/Mrs Dearest friend Hi honey

    If this isnt personalized, what more can I expect? :)

    1. Re:what does it mean? by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Funny
      Do they have access to my medical file?

      No, you left your webcam on. You should get a better chair, btw.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  2. Dupe. by khasim · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/28/181 1210

    And not very accurate the first time, either. Since Mom probably isn't going to be sending me v1agr4 ads, it will be easy to find and clean the infected machines.

  3. Security Through Obscurity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thanks! just what I want spammers to know

  4. What else do they have? by drsmack1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are they also hosting some pages on their site to help me make anthrax or a nuclear bomb? How about how to pick up under age girls.

    Seriously; do the spammers NEED any more help?

    --

    Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind

    1. Re:What else do they have? by MadUndergrad · · Score: 5, Funny

      Really, I think papers on how to pick up girls are would be greatly appreciated by the greater /. community. In fact, it seems only natural that nerds would use papers and research to figure this sort of thing out. It's either that or Vader masks.

  5. Great! and in other news... by truckaxle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Two researchers demonstrate how much more effective the AIDS virus could become if only a few basic modifications could be made to personalize the attack on the immune system.

  6. don't kid yourselves by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Th US most definately is the world leader in the production of spam

    treat the disease not the symptoms

  7. Why are we helping spammer? by MrBulwark · · Score: 5, Funny

    And while we are at it, lets publish a paper telling people how to do a better job money laundering, or new way to smuggle cocain into the country.

    1. Re:Why are we helping spammer? by fosterNutrition · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't be so hasty to attack their research. If you think about it, this isn't really any different from publishing a whitepaper showing how to break the DRM on a file, or how to phreak an old phone. No, this is not intended as flamebait, but it seems to me like any distinction drawn between those actions is based simply on the prevailing culture and attitudes at /. where breaking DRM = good, sending spam = bad.

      Now I'm not trying to argue that we should have more spam, but the people at Sony would also not want to argue that we should have more DRM-cracking. It's simply a matter of perspective. And anyway, I'm sure the paper (no I didn't RTFA) was created to try to address the problem before it really shows up so it's not so bad rather than encouraging the noxious spamlords.

  8. Duh! by Billosaur · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The reason they don't do this now is that the spammers doing it are not geeks. They're taking pre-built scripts, modifying some parameters, and letting them go. They will keep doing this until those scripts no longer work, and then they will move onto newer ones. The only was this will happen is if some hacker gets bored, reads this article, and desides there's a lot of cash to be made selling just such a thing to the spammers.

    Be real -- no matter how personalized an email gets, I'm still going to know it's not from somebody I know, because I don't make email my primary mode of correspondence and where I do, I can easily figure out that my mother isn't going to be sending me ads for Viagra.

    Now, if they could make a Turing-capable spam generator, I'd be impressed.

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  9. They're data mining already! by nekoniku · · Score: 4, Funny

    How else would they know my p3n1z i5 5m@LL?

    --
    "It's a wonderful idea. But it doesn't work." -- Tad Danielewski
  10. Actually snail mail is just as broken... by Lispy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Every day I get quite upset by opening my reallife mailbox.
    It's totally unacceptable: Buried below a ton of trash I find two seriously dangerous invoices with 4digit numbers in the red. If I ever miss out one of them I'd probably go to jail, but hey, why not throw another pizza flyer on top of all that, the planet sure can handle this and what else are those trees for?

    Personally if I was going to choose I'd vote for e-mail spam just to get rid of this total waste of ressources.
    There should be a LAW against this, and against buying from spammers, reallife or virtual.

  11. Recommendations by Viraptor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fortunately for those who detest spam, the authors also present four new defenses that could help stop this newer, more personalized spam. First, e-mail archives can be encrypted, making it difficult for malware to mine them for information.


    WOW - so I've got to accept that my computer IS broken into and encrypt even local data? Thank you very much - my computer would rather not be broken into.

    Second, these archives can also be "salted" with false information such as spam trap addresses. Third, the authors suggest that all URLs followed from an e-mail client be viewed in a "sandboxed" browser that would prevent automatic downloads.


    Sandboxed browser? Ok - they're joking. Who uses external content displaying in their mail? And anyone hasn't got a "HTML=+80% spam" rule in mail client yet, generated AUTOMATICALLY FROM EXAMPLES?

    Finally, anti-spam filters can be adjusted to better screen for these types of attacks.


    Care to elaborate?

    Ok - this is all going in the wrong direction. Why shouldn't I trust *my system*? Why should I allow my incomming mail to use outside objects? I thought that people, who can build a natural-language-messages data mining / composing system can understand basics of home computer security...
    Besides - if spam will mimic a friend's style and probably send mail as that friend - then you know exactly who to filter out and who needs billing for a "PC security" lessons ;)
  12. Targetted Spam by overshoot · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Sort of an oxymoron, isn't it?

    The whole point of the spam business model is that it's low-cost. Any filtering would raise costs compared to simply flooding the world with the same payload.

    If spammers were in the slightest interested in addressing their markets, I wouldn't be seeing several thousand Asian-language spam per day addressed to a North American mail server. None of us would be seeing spam with hash-busters, mangled "Subject:" lines, and other filter avoidance hacks.

    This seems like one more attempt to promote the idea of "good spam" for mainsleazers like Kohl's department stores.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."