Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:37:19 -0800 (PST) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> To: matt@ARPA.MAIL.NET (Matt Heckaman) Cc: security@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD-SECURITY) Subject: Re: Strange Spam Message-ID: <200002210737.XAA58181@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002210147400.28192-100000@epsilon.lucida.qc.ca> from Matt Heckaman at "Feb 21, 2000 01:55:44 am"
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> This is funny, reading it more carefully - there are also references to > DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), UHF (Ultra High > Frequency), and Interpol. > > Also, Mathematic is mispelled to "Mathematik" which strikes me as odd, German/Danish dictionary? > giving the caliber of words used throughout the message. Another thing > to note, is the capitalization scheme; It appears that proper nouns and > places are for the most part capitalized, with some exceptions such as > "cynthia", "sarah1", and a few others. > > All and all, this is nothing but pure conjecture, but it does almost > totally rule out the possibility of it being some random misplaced SPAM > email. It definately has the form of being intended for someone. I agree with that. And would further conjecture the person is at an unknown location and/or hiding. And has possibly limited access to resources. Another think to yourself for a long hard time about _why_ someone might try to use this form (bulk email) of communications and cryptography of a weak form to get a message to someone. They probably don't care that the NSA could crack this in a day, but they do care that every other person could just read it. It could say ``Nuclear launch in 6 hours from this transmission'' and it wouldn't matter that the NSA could crack it in 12 hours, just so long as all the ``agents'' knew that in 6 hours all hell was going to break loose around the globe and they need to take care of the last minute details. You don't need a sledge hammer to break a piece of tempered glass, a tap with a 1 ounce hammer works fine if the glass is stricken at the right angle (usually the edge of the sheet of glass). > > Unfortunately, without figuring the key sequence that this is based on, > it's probably impossible for us to decypher it. My original question still > stands. If this is some kind of code, why would someone do something like > this as opposed to PGP encryption or similar? -- Or both combined for the > very paranoid. Your assuming the sender of the message has/had a way to get the receipents public key. If the receipent is at an unknown location (also explaining why this is going out as mass email/spam) how would you get his/her key to encrypt with? -- Rod Grimes - KD7CAX @ CN85sl - (RWG25) rgrimes@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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