Image spam

[mikea]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 10:10:57AM -0800, Chris Yuzik wrote:
> My impression is that pretty much anything that arrives with an attached 
> GIF these days is image spam. Are you seeing much ham with an attached GIF?
> 
> I suppose some people perhaps have their company logo attached to their 
> emails, but would it be better if they just had the appropriate code in 
> their signature to pull the company logo image from their website?
> 
> I would love to do something...anything...to thwart this damned image 
> spam. It's tempting to just strip GIF files out of emails, but then the 
> spam would likely start to arrive as a JPG or PNG.
> 
> Eventually, we might have to go back to the good old days when email was 
> plain text only.
> 
> Ideas?

I work in a government agency that has been described as the largest 
civil engineering shop in the state. We build highways, bridges, and 
similar structures. As much as I'd love to go back to pure text mail
and ship files voa webservers and the like, I can't get that to fly:
too many people inside and outside depend on E-mail to move files, and
add thereby to my woes. It's hard to stuff all the neutrons back into 
that sphere of Pu.

I see GIFs, JPGs, PNGs, various formats of CAD files, audio and video 
files[1], PDF, PS, about 10 different word-processor and spreadsheet 
formats, PowerPoint and its look-alikes, and you-name-it. 

Whatever we do, as long as it's not pure text mail, the spammers and
botnet operators will construct countermeasures. We are, as Tom Lehrer
wrote, involved in a game of "escalatio". But we all knew that. 

You want ideas? I'm fresh out.

[1]  I *did* manage to get an authorized list of audio and video 
     senders for inbound and outbound mail, to keep the home videos, 
     pirated audio files, and "funny files" down, but even that was 
     a struggle. 

-- 
Mike Andrews, W5EGO
mikea at mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin