ASCII Art Part 2

ASCII art is the practice of using text characters to illustrate an image or message. It most likely dates back to the late 70's computers began to commonly have screens.

In the last few months spammers have utilized the method to include content in their messages that can't be read by spam filters. Now spammers are really starting to get the art form perfected.

     ____       _           
    |  _ \ ___ | | _____  __
    | |_) / _ \| |/ _ \ \/ /
    |  _ < (_) | |  __/>  <
    |_| \_\___/|_|\___/_/\_\      

So far this trend has been limited to a handful of campaigns. I've only seen the "art" shown above and a couple other examples. The good news is that it's pretty easy to detect and filter individual incidents. The above image actually includes many different patterns that are unique and recognizable. SpamButcher already does this to block emails in a few cases.

It may also be possible to detect attempts to obfuscate in a more general sense. SpamButcher already does this in a few similar situations, but not with ASCII art specifically.

SpamButcher's 21-day trial can be downloaded from this site. SpamButcher can be used as an Outlook spam blocker, Eudora spam filter, or with almost any other email client that uses POP3.

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