Gecko/20041007 Debian/1.7.3-5 To: Udhay Shankar N <udhay@pobox.com> Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com Subject: Re: Conspiracy Theory O' The Day Sender: owner-cryptography@metzdowd.com Udhay Shankar N wrote:

I just got a batch of spam: perfectly justified blocks of random-looking characters. Makes me wonder if somebody is trying to train Bayesian filters to reject PGP messages.

Another hypothesis: Cover traffic, to defeat traffic analysis. The procedure: send N copies. N-M of them are spam, sent to uninterested parties. The other M parties are the intended recipients. Provided N>>M, and other mild restrictions, they achieve plausible deniability. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'