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Could Fake Phishing Emails Help Fight Spam?
Posted by
Soulskill
on Mon Feb 02, 2009 09:50 AM
from the hello-sir-madam dept.
from the hello-sir-madam dept.
Glyn Moody writes "Apparently, the US Department of Justice has been sending out hoax emails to test the security awareness of its staff. How about applying a similar strategy to tackling spam among ordinary users? If fake spam messages offering all the usual benefits, and employing all the usual tricks, were sent out by national security agencies around the world, it would select precisely the people who tend to respond to spam. The agencies could then contact them from a suitably important-looking government address, warning about what could have happened. Some might become more cautious as a result, others will not. But again, it is precisely the latter who are more likely to respond to further fake spam messages in the future, allowing the process to be repeated as often as necessary. The system would be cheap to run — spam is very efficient — and could use the latest spam as templates."
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Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
The spam problem will not be solved with laws or pretty tricks like this.
It is a technological problem, and as such will be solved by technological changes: the SMTP protocol is outdated and totally unadapted to the modern uses to which we put it. Let's replace it with something that authentifies sender and receiver properly, and that allows for efficient transmission of binary data.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you come up with a protocol that will not allow a zombie box to, as you say, authenticate properly?
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the zombie box has username/password on a legit account (or whatever the authentication is) then no protocol will help. It might, however, stop email faking and sending from the zombie box itself, which would give a better point of control (because at the moment anyone can send emails that purport to be from Yahoo.com from their own box, if it is set up right, but a protocol that could fail connections claiming to be Yahoo.com emails that don't come from an approved Yahoo.com server would reduce the problem). I don't think anything can solve the "spammer signs up for asdfghjkl.com and starts sending email through that server" spam.
I don't see how this'll help, though.
1) The people who fall for this won't actually learn until they're actually stung, not just an email that says it is from a government agency
2) Chances are they'll probably be more suspicious of the 'Government Agency' email than the "get stuff cheap" email because they're interested in getting stuff cheap, but why would they get an email from the Government
3) Spam is spam is spam
4) Spammers/phishers will piggyback the Government emails, clone them and send out similar emails saying they'd been caught by one of these traps, so go to [insert site]
5) Despite what I said in 1), some of these people will never learn (see the people who get conned out of thousands of £/$/etc)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
The only solutions to spam that will actually work are ones that negatively effect the person whose computer is being used to send it. This leads to massive problems in trying to balance a workable service with the penalties.
Personally I would like to see ISPs begin to implement a system where they block service to anyone sending over a certain number of emails in a given time frame (this solution can be as t
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a kernel developer, but every mailing list to which I once subscribed moved to web based forums, which I find much, much more convenient to use. I think mailing lists are a relic which some are reluctant to give up, and I'm sure there may be good reasons for that. I just don't know what they are.
Here's some of the reasons I prefer my mailing lists to forums:
* I don't have to remember to go there; it comes to me.
* I KNOW what I've read already.
* I can set up filters to mark my own "posts" as read automatically, to delete posts from people I'd rather not hear from, to flag items with particular subject lines, etc.
* Thunderbird has a good search tool. Online forums often don't, and it's luck of the draw whether they do or not.
* If the internet is down, I can still find that post that tells me how to do what it is I want to do right now.
* I can (with the original poster's permission) forward all or part of a message to an individual or another list.
* I can (with discretion and an x-post note) post the same text to multiple lists at the same time.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but those are the reasons I've advocated against email lists I belong to switching to online forums. Since most of them are Yahoo groups, though, people *can* read them as web forums if they want to instead.
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
I was going to make this comment in computer-ish terms. It's called "push content" versus "pull content". Mailing lists PUSH the content to the user. Web fora require the user to PULL the content.
PUSH is much better for important information. PULL is better for information that is not critical.
My cell provider has an email to SMS gateway (and did the same thing prior to such gateways being common.) They also have "internet access" I could pay for that allows me to access POP/IMAP mail servers and web sites. The former is PUSH, the latter is PULL. When my server is dying, I want PUSH data telling me that. If my house goes below freezing, I want PUSH data telling me that. When I want to discuss hobbies, I mostly want PULL so I control when I read the information. If I want to know the temps in my house (other than extremes) I want PULL so I can control how often I am told.
One reason you didn't mention is that, for Unix users, at least, it is absolutely trivial to set up an email alias ("mailing list") using nothing other than standard email tools, where a web forum requires running a web server and the forum tools. I do both -- I have aliases for meeting notices and I have a Drupal wiki for online discussions. The aliases were so much easier and take so much fewer resources.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's probably a good idea overall, but it would get a lot of criticism as either a) people with email sending addictions sent too many emails and got caught or b) people with infected machines probably wouldn't know/care about what to do and would just object to being blocked.
ISPs blocking ISPs is potentially asking for trouble, though. It's like IP blacklisting, but it leaves a lot of innocents getting hit just because the ISP hasn't dealt with some trouble makers to some arbitrary degree to make another I
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
"Congratulations! By responding to this test email, you've received an IRS coupon for a FREE TAX AUDIT. Enjoy!"
That's one way to teach them. Granted, it's a bit Pavlovian, but ... if it works, it works.
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean it'll make people salivate for food at the sound of a bell if they get a tax audit? Now that's some crazy conditioning!
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
It might, however, stop email faking and sending from the zombie box itself, which would give a better point of control (because at the moment anyone can send emails that purport to be from Yahoo.com from their own box, if it is set up right, but a protocol that could fail connections claiming to be Yahoo.com emails that don't come from an approved Yahoo.com server would reduce the problem).
Note there is already a system for doing this. It called the Sender Policy Framework [wikipedia.org] (SPF) and uses DNS records to tell mail servers which machines are allowed to send mail for your domain.
This is not a perfect system though because often there is a legitimate need to use a different e-mail domain address than where your mail came from (eg. forwarding, etc). For that reason it doesn't appear that many mail servers are configured to check SPF records.
At the very least it seems like they would be good for pre-tagging SPAM (ie. still deliver it but add something to the header that says it could be spam).
Parent
Self identification might help zombies (Score:5, Interesting)
The "good" spam is sort of like a public education campaign about STDs. It's part of a well rounded solution in raising public awareness. Your's may not need raising but you will benefit if the awareness of others' is raised so put up with it.
Now then there's the post infection detection problem. We could take a simmilar approach of turning a bad thing to our advantage. Presumably these Zombie bots try to hit a series of predefined URLS to announce their availability. Once some of those are known, when not sieze them and use them to get infected computers to self-identify then notify the owners or if unresponsive their ISPs?
That would not cure all infection. But there is a well known principal in medial virus infection called the R-factor and that is the minimum number of infections needed in a population before the disease becomes self sustaining or growing in infections. We don't have to eliminate all zombies before we reach a point where the infection rate is highly damped.
Parent
Re:Self identification might help zombies (Score:4, Funny)
The "good" spam is sort of like a public education campaign about STDs.
Ooh, terrible metaphor. By that logic, this "good" spam would be like the government having unprotected sex with people to identify who needs to be educated about proper condom use.
Parent
Re:Self identification might help zombies (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Actually, ... (Score:4, Funny)
No, because your metaphor doesn't take account of the fact that the proposed solution causes a lot of spam to be sent.
It's more like that the condom police just have sex with you bareback, and afterwards they say "okay well this time it was just genital warts... next time it might be AIDS".
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Can you come up with a protocol that will not allow a zombie box to, as you say, authenticate properly?
RFC 3514 [wikipedia.org] does propose a solution to this sort of thing...
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are advantages to thinking of (and addressing) spam as a social problem rather than a technological problem. For starters, treating it as a technological problem leads to an arms race mentality in which spammers are continually driven to "outsmart" technological safeguards as they are developed.
Personally, I have no problem with an approach in which "purchasers" (in other words, anybody who responds to spam in any way) are exposed and educated by any means necessary ... with education consisting of an escalating series of measures until the recipients finally comprehend just how fucking stupid their actions were.
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most spam is motivated by profit: trying to sell something to the recipient. There is therefore a money trail. Law enforcement could simply respond to a small proportion of spam and track where the money goes, and then prosecute for fraud, selling unregistered drugs, tax evasion -- it;s a good bet they are breaking some existing laws, no new "cyber laws" are needed. But they don't because governments really don't care about it. Each spam is a fleabite, and below the threshold for which they take action (I've heard at least $5000 for the FBI). And various business lobby groups have made sure that there are plenty of loopholes so their marketing material can get through.
My point is that they CAN find the spammers. They don't even try. Slashdottes foam at the mouth and talk about lynching. We imagine the rest of the world shares our hatred for spammers. But really, most people don't care. Governemnt leaders don't care, if they use email at all it's filtered by their staff and they never see spam.
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's replace it with something that authentifies sender and receiver properly, and that allows for efficient transmission of binary data.
Sigh...it's so tiring to hear people on /. say things like "it's a technological problem" about spam. Do you know how easy it is to get a personal digital certificate from Thawte? Fill out a few forms, download your PKCS certificate. What's to stop your sooper-dooper anti-spam system if you can authenticate a spammer? Remember, if you can legitimately receive an e-mail message from ME (a stranger to you, presumably), you haven't "solved" spam. If you can't legitimately receive an e-mail message from me, I can't tell you that I'm your long-lost twin brother (i.e. your email system is then useless).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So your arguement is basicly "The current system sucks, therefore no system will work!"?
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
The point of authentication is to get accountability, not to get instant filtering. If a spammer is using a fake certificate, that certificate can be blacklisted. If some company isn't checking for fake date, certificates by that company can be blacklisted. If random joe is sending me good mail, I could white list him. If random-mail-provider.com is doing good at stopping fake accounts, I could whitelist them as well. And when you would send your twin mail via a good email provider it would arrive just fine.
Today you have the issue that you can't really do much, because you can't tell where a mail did come from. Most of the data in the headers is completly fakable and useless, and yet they get used a lot for mail filtering because its the only data we have.
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam is a matter of social engineering, of convincing someone to buy a product, give out information or click on a random executable, even though every rational fibre in that person's body should warn against doing so. Yes, using something more robust than SMTP would help, but it's no cure against stupidity and botnets.
I like this initiative, I just wish it would target those who are already at risk of 'stupid-clicking' instead of those with more than one braincell. It's disappointing that those who do respond to spam emails (twice or so...) don't get taken out of the gene pool either
Parent
not a tech problem - it's a PEOPLE problem (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
Spam persists because a tiny (absolutely, infinitesimally small) proportion of the recipients actually respond to it. Whether that's due to stupidity, greed (oooh - I might get something for nothing), boredom, accident or simply curiosity (hmm, I've never replied to SPAM before, I wonder what happens).
The costs of sending it are so low, that it is still worthwhile, providing there's one idiot in a million who takes the bait.
How do you cure this people problem? I don't know. Even if you spend you whole life telling children not to put dirt in their mouths, some still will. You'll never get rid of spam until all the dirt-eaters and spam-responders get a dose of common sense, and that'll never happen.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Disease is a biological problem. You can't eliminate disease from the world using a purely technological approach.
However, if you have an internet connection to post to /., then chances are good that you and I both have living conditions that are far far more livable and comfortable thanks to the fact that people did use technology when it was possible to prevent what could be prevented and aliveate what couldn't.
You and I get the flu, pneumonia, or even TB, we are likely to live through it. That wasn't the
To take this even further OT (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
The real solution is to simply tell all respondents that they have won an all expense paid vacation. Send them some fake e-ticket to print out and tell them where to go, and then just put them all on a rocket to the sun. Problem solved.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
The "B Ark" solution, I like it.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)
Private customers are even worse, their computer skill level is so low that it is impossible to communicate the fact that they __personally__ must do something and there is no widget solution.
As far as the government doing this, it just makes matters worse. Soon the spammers will mimic the official documents and as a final step will tell the consumer to install pwn_my_Machine.exe to solve all their problems.
Parent
Nah, dumb idea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, many of the people clueless enough to respond to some spam email are also the ones who wouldn't understand the reply that came back to warn them of their behavior.
(Heck, you wouldn't believe how many people I've had to help out, because a free version of their Windows anti-virus software expired, and they couldn't figure out what to do with the windows popping up to tell them they needed to download the newer version. They thought that stuff meant their anti-virus "broke" because they got a virus!)
it's already in use... (Score:3)
And it's called more exactly honey-pots.
Re:it's already in use... (Score:5, Informative)
And it's called more exactly honey-pots.
Actually, honey pots are more about collecting spammer addresses, not identifying their targets.
Parent
actually, this works fairly well. (Score:5, Informative)
my school district did the same thing, and it works great.
It's the best form of targeted training. Only those who fall for shit like this get a lesson, and follow-up fake scams had a MUCH lower success rate.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Dumbass idea, man (Score:5, Insightful)
Sending more spam in the name of eliminating spam is not eliminating spam. It's still creating a mess on people's email servers and personal computers, and storage for much of it adds up, especially at the server level. How about we simply improve our educational system and teach marketing majors a bit more about business ethics and ethical advertising?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, we're talking about companies sending these fake messages to their own employees, a local, controlled list. If it's your own network, it's not spam. It's an approved, system-wide message. Get off your high horse.
Re:Dumbass idea, man (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm really surprised that phishing and viruses are confused with spam, they are very different things:
- viruses/phising: really "dangerous" messages. Opening them might lead to a comprimised bank account, PC, etc. In this case fake viruses/phising emails might help, educating people not to open such emails.
- SPAM: useless but harmless messages that are merely an annoyance to 99.9% of people. The problem is not opening such emails but the mere fact that you receive them. If someone opens spam then he might be actually interested in the advertised products, which is not bad, the problem is only that the same email is sent to thousands of people who are not. Sending fake spam to educate people not to open spam is just stupid. I don't think spam has anything to do with this article, the word has been just incorrectly used.
Parent
Re:Dumbass idea, man (Score:4, Insightful)
I find your complaints (and, frankly, suggestions) myopic. You can teach ethics all you want, but the basics of human nature show time and time again that it's not guaranteed to stick.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Go back to my original response and read the first sentence again: Sending spam to eliminate spam is not eliminating spam. If that's too overly simple for you, I don't know of any other way to get the point across.
That's a great sound bite for an audience with an IQ of about 80, but it doesn't hold up to analytical rigor. If you decrease the spam response rate, you make spamming less lucrative, and you have fewer spammers.
That's still pretty simple, even for sound-bite based logic such as you seem to p
Awful (Score:3, Insightful)
This idea is awful for the same reasons that I don't want the local police department entering my home to show me how easy it is to pick my locks.
The idea smells of John Ashcroft appointees.
Been there done that. (Score:5, Interesting)
I did that back in 2001 to the sales force at Comcast. we in the IT department formed and sent a email with a exe file payload. when ran it reported back to us who opened it and pooped up a message on their screen that said, "IF I WAS A REAL VIRUS ALL YOUR FILES WOULD BE DELETED"
we sent it from outside the company with a yahoo.com address
85% opened and ran the attachment. we used this as a part of our It education to our users. after the classes that month we repeated it 45 days later.
we had a 90% opening rate this time. you really can not teach the users. Most people who are not IT professionals dont care. If they hose their own computer they dont have to fix it, you do.
The only effective thing would be to actually delete all the users files and never give them back. Humans only really learn from cause and effect. Simulations rarely teach them.
Re:Been there done that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The only effective thing would be to actually delete all the users files and never give them back. Humans only really learn from cause and effect. Simulations rarely teach them.
Fire them all after the 2nd time. The survivors would warn the new hires.
Your post advocates a.... (Score:5, Funny)
Your post advocates a
(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
A couple of corrections (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (X) vigilante
Sending out spam to counter spam is bringing justice by breaking a law.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
These mailing lists as well as end users would have to deal with additional volume of spam.
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (you need to compete with spam filters)
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers (they never learn)
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering (you're adding to the volume of spam bandwidth)
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
(X) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Parent
Perhaps (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps they could hire some kind of outside contractor - with an extensive botnet and lots of spam-sending experience - at some ridiculous fee! I'm sure with significant compensation, these professionals could be convinced to spam the DoJ.
In all seriousness, all this will do is make a certain few people very very sad inside when they see just how easy it is to fool the common deskmonkey, and just how much info you can get. At best, some of those certain few people will become motivated to make it their profession...
Phishing side-effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight -- we should suggest to people who are highly credulous that there is the possibility that they might receive legitimate email from "suitably important-looking government address"?
That will never cause bigger, more successful phishing scams.
Infotainment (Score:5, Interesting)
Forbidden in Austria (Score:4, Interesting)
I once wanted to do such a thing for my employer: sending out fake "Enter your login credentials here to win xxx" emails to our staff and invite those that responded with submitting their true credentials to security awareness trainings. However, it turned out that this would have been a violation of privacy rights here in Austria, Europe.
The employer could have been able to discriminate people for falling for the scam and thus it is illegal for my company to do such a thing.
Proposed Name for Fake Phishing (Score:5, Funny)