off topic -- spam assassin

[Jacob Hallen]

In article <mailman.1033055435.7410.python-list at python.org>,
Skip Montanaro  <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>    Laura> On the advice of several of you here, I installed spam assassin,
>    Laura> and had a pleasant six months of nearly spam free mail.  Thank
>    Laura> you, each and every one of you who recommmended it.  Alas, the
>    Laura> spammers have got smarter, and I am now getting 25+ pieces of
>    Laura> spam that aren't caught by spam assassin every day again. :-(
>    Laura> What's new for our side of the arms race?
>
>Laura,
>
>The tension between spammers and the people who develop spam-fighting
>software can be likened to an arms race.  It's fairly clear the spammers use
>tools like SA to make their mailings more likely to get through.  If you
>installed SA six months ago, I'd suspect you're running 2.20 or thereabouts.
>Since then 2.31 and 2.41 have been released.  You might want to upgrade.

There is actually one big difference between the spam race and an arms race.
In an arms race, the attacker creates bigger, smarter and more powerful
weapons in order to overcome the defenses of the defender.

In the spam race, the attackers will have to become more subtle and low-
keyed in order to overcome the defenses. An equilibrium will be reached
when it is no longer possible for a computer to distinguish between spam
and ordinary mail. However, it will be interesting to see what porn sites,
Nigeria letters, chain letter scams and work at home schemes will look like
without using the familiar phrases. Maybe something like:

Can we interest you in life like reproductions of ladies of negotiable
affection wearing attire suitable for extremly warm climates.

Jacob Hallén

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