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The NSA Is Collecting Lots of Spam

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

wiredog writes "One side effect of the NSA's surveillance program is that a great deal of spam is getting swept up along with the actual communications data. Overwhelming amounts, perhaps. From The Washington Post: '[W]hen one Iranian e-mail address of interest got taken over by spammers ... the Iranian account began sending out bogus messages to its entire address book. ... the spam that wasn't deleted by those recipients kept getting scooped up every time the NSA's gaze passed over them. And as some people had marked the Iranian account as a safe account, additional spam messages continued to stream in, and the NSA likely picked those up, too....Every day from Sept. 11, 2011 to Sept. 24, 2011, the NSA collected somewhere between 2 GB and 117 GB of data concerning this Iranian address."

16 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Spam - the perfect cloak by bizitch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if I want to do terrorist stuff - I should probably hide my communications inside emails about ch3ap V!agr@. Eventually the NSA will have to get a mail washer to help filter out the crap and my criminal activity will go un-noticed.

    --
    ---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
    1. Re:Spam - the perfect cloak by Valdrax · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Shouldn't be too hard to write steganography software that hid its messages in the pseudo-random changes to the text for filter evasion. You'd just need a good library of spam message templates of varying length to use as the chaff. For better results, run the same process with random messages that are sent out as part of the same bulk mailing blast to a large list of spam recipients to make it impossible to tell which message is important and which is not. Two terrorists can converse by broadcasting garbage to the world.

      Now that I think of it, I wonder if that's the reason I get spam messages with no attachments or links to tell me where to get the product should I have a temporarily absence from reason and want to actually purchase them...

      --
      If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
    2. Re:Spam - the perfect cloak by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 3, Funny

      ch3@p plut0n1um!! Buy CANDU plut0n1um at r0-ck b0ttom pr1c3s!

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    3. Re:Spam - the perfect cloak by Nivag064 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      During the second world war, in New Zealand, someone was tasked with reading laundry lists over the radio. Hidden in ththis was coded information for secret agents, embedded observers, and the like. They may have told something like: listen for private Scotty's list at 1605 hours and do this if he has 3 pairs of underpants washed, do this if it is 5 pairs, and also this if his green shirt was starched...

      So it would be a near certainty that agencies in a lot of countries use spam to communicate to deep cover agents. Tens of thousands of people might have spam about a particular brand of viag... that has a coded message for selected agents - but those agents who read the spam could not be distinguished from non-agents.

      I am sure that the NSA, and other agencies (not just in the USA) have programs to try and sort out the spam to detect this - which is yet another type of arms race. How do nyiou know some is a message & not straight spam???

    4. Re:Spam - the perfect cloak by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Funny

      Warning, if nuclear explosion lasts longer than four hours, consult your physician.

  2. Re:LOL by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Funny

    Even the NSA can't do anything about SPAM.

    Ah, but now they can ... they can take all of that information, identify who isn't complying with CAN-SPAM, identify people profiting off shady deals on the internet, figure out who has been evading taxes, and give us all a better internet.

    OK, now stop laughing.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. with that kind of accuracy ... by Sterculius · · Score: 5, Funny

    "somewhere between 2 GB and 117 GB" ... can't narrow it down any more than that? Are you sure it was an Iranian email address, or was it just somewhere between Israel and Yemen?

  4. They'll soon have additional funding by tech.kyle · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...as soon as they hear back from that Nigerian Prince.

    --
    If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
  5. This should make their operatives easier to spot. by intermodal · · Score: 5, Funny

    They're the ones with the biggest penises and/or breasts.

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
  6. So it's come to this by FuzzNugget · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Spam is actually doing something useful. Enemy of my enemy and all that.

  7. Serves 'em right by themushroom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you're gonna go snooping through people's stuff, you're bound to find a lot of garbage.

    --
    Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
    1. Re:Serves 'em right by vux984 · · Score: 4, Funny

      If you're gonna go snooping through people's stuff, you're bound to find a lot of garbage.

      Garbage!? That's how my terrorist cell communicates you insensitive clod.

      Cialis spam is "Alpha"
      [ia1i5 spam is "Bravo"
      CiAli$ spam is "Charlie" ...

      Viagra spam is "Death"
      ViAgr4 spam is "America"
      P3n is 3nlargem3nt is "Allah"
      We1gt L0ss is "Target"
      "I saw your picture online" is "Great Satan" ...
      "This stock is making a turnaround" is whatever letter the stock starts with.
      "This stock is on High Alert for Today" is whatever the 2nd letter of the stock starts with.
      "This Company could be come my longest running winner!!!" has a GPS latitude encoded into the digits of the target price, trade date, and last trade info
      Longitude comes in on a fake PO tracking number shipment spam

  8. Re:SPAM is a way to hide a message in plain sight by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or, maybe its shows a new vector for an anti-NSA attack by the Iranians.

    Fuck the Iranians, I'm signing up for everything.

    Everything.

    Every.

    Thing.

    We will choke them to death on our spam.

    --

    ---
    ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
  9. Re:LOL by crakbone · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It really does not mean much. With deduplication a terabyte of spam would be next to nothing.

  10. Re:SPAM is a way to hide a message in plain sight by RenderSeven · · Score: 4, Funny

    REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

    FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT attack YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN the THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS embassy BY VIRTUE OF ITS at NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY dawn CONFIDENTIAL AND 'TOP SECRET' on tuesday. I AM SURE AND lunch HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR will not ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO be PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF provided THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING regards A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING achmed MAXIIMUM CONFIDENCE.

  11. Re:A Herring? by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When most of the population (both US and World) collectively say, "That is an ridiculous and unreasonable abuse of power!!!!" I am fairly sure it is covered by the fourth amendment.

    This is the reasonably discredited concept that the world has some vote on what the US Constitution should say. What the Fourth Amendment says is not subject to the opinion of Germany or Kenya or Mexico or China or ... nor should it be.

    Even though some errant Supreme Court justices keep yapping about applying world concepts to US constitutional law, that's not how it is supposed to work. If the founders had wanted us to follow Greek laws, they would have put Greek laws in the US books, not assumed that 21st century justices would look to Greece as an example of how to run a country.

    Simply put, if they want to search a citizen's property (digital or physical), then they need to get a warrant for that specific search.

    Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment did not put it so simply. The founders could have worded it that simply. The fact that they included the term "unreasonable" in the prohibition means they meant for there to be a concept of "reasonable" that wasn't prohibited. Nor did they use the simple words "A warrant is required for all searches."

    These were simple people, doing a large task. They could have used simple words if they said what they meant. Since they did not, the clear implication is that the concepts are more complex than you make them out to be, and that they understood that.